Talk to me, Shel

LISTEN TO THE MUSTN'TS

Shel Silverstein

Listen to the MUSTN'TS, child,
      Listen to the DON'TS
      Listen to the SHOULDN'TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WONT'S
      Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me-
      Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be

Oh, Shel

how I want to believe you meant this.

How my childhood self lay innocently down

the weight of truth on everything you wrote.

How I wish you had been there to ask last night

when I walked a short distance up the street

in a slightly sketchy part of town

alone, in my short skirt

and calf-covering boots,

when the “shouldn’ts” came flooding in

when my vulnerability arched up over my head like

a question mark or a hooded cobra

or a neon sign

I would have asked you,

white man from my parent’s generation,

do you think this is a bad idea?

Because don’t walk alone at night

Is the air I have breathed all my life

From my night professors with their classes of adult women

don’t go into the parking lot alone, walk with a buddy

To the internet commenters

she should have known better than to wear that

what did she expect was going to happen?

To my friends who walk out of their way

to accompany me to my car as a matter of course.

And so I’m not sure, Shel,

despite your empowering poetry,

that you would have backed your message up with a

go for it.

Because the cultural lesson is that

if a man is not protecting me

I am a treat offered up on a plate.

It’s very confusing

I was taught that America is in the “first world”

and that people in “third world” countries live in fear of violence.

I was also taught

to live in fear of violence.

I must conclude that men here

live in the first world

and I do not.

Shel, it is so disappointing to realize

that you wrote your reassurances from a land

I have never visited.

In this Pew poll from 2013, forty percent of Americans said that men and women are treated equally by society.