When Words Wear Chains

Feature Image Above: was created by Copilot and me.

Over at Weekly Prompts, the Weekend Challenge is the word “Squish”
To visit their fabulous site, please click >>Here … and I think everything about censorship is awfully “Squishy.”


Nancy’s story on The Elephant’s Trunk [https://theelephantstrunk.org/2026/01/20/rdp-tuesday-disapprove/ ] stirred an old frustration in me — how easily free expression can be twisted, muted, or dismissed. I left a brief comment there, but the idea continued to nag at me throughout the afternoon. Sitting in a quiet corner of the café, I found myself shaping those few lines into something fuller, a small protest poem about the weight of censorship and the stubborn resilience of words. This is where that moment led.



When Words Wear Chains


Words wearing chains,
Pages awash in teary rain;
Quills feel the pain,
Like wisdom without veins
Inside lifeless brains.

How to explain
The inhumane
Of censorship’s careering train,
While the reigning regimes
Sip on foreign champagne.








Ivor Steven ©  January 2026

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ivor20

G'day, and welcome to my blog site. My name is Ivor Steven, I live in Geelong, Australia. I'm an ex-industrial chemist, and a retired plumber, and a former Carer of my wife(Carole), for 30 years, who suffered from severe MS. I Write poetry about those personal thoughts, throughout and beyond my life as a Carer. I've been blogging for over 2 years, and writing poems for 19 years. Of course a lot of my poems are about my favourite subject Carole, but since I've been blogging my writings have become quite varied, humourous, mystical, observational, and even a few monster/horror poems.

25 thoughts on “When Words Wear Chains”

  9. censorship is government’s ways getting rid of those opinions that those who ruled over us don’t like, and if we silence ourselves because the government censored us, then we’d allowed them to gain complete control over our lives, so, whenever there’s censorship, the people needs to get LOUDER than the voices that tries to, silence us.

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  10. Such a powerful, important, timely, well-expressed poem, Ivor! Thank you for writing it and sharing it!
    (((HUGS))) ❤️❤️❤️
    PS…”Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” – Harry S. Truman

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