Consent is Everything – A poem for Parsha Vayishlach

And Shechem the son of Hamor, the Hivvite, the prince of the land,
saw her, and he took her, lay with her, and violated her.
-Genesis 34:2

Consent is everything.

Listen up, oh princes of Hivvite –
Do not take what is not yours.
Your desires and your status
entitle you to nothing.

Consent is everything.

Listen up, oh Weinsteins and Spaceys –
Your art may be good, your money plentiful.
But none of the contracts let you
take possession of anyone else.

Consent is everything.

Listen up, oh long list of names that
gets longer every day a news outlet exists –
You may be moderately famous.
The masses may have told you
you can have it all. You cannot have it all.

Consent is everything.

Listen up, you old men who’ve
gotten away with it for years –
The laws are no longer in your favor.
The sons of Jacob are coming to

circumcise you.

Consent is everything.
Listen up, young’uns –
Learn from these mistakes before
they become your mistakes.
Learn this by the common sense of decency.
Do the right thing all the time.

Consent is everything.

everything
everything

Everything is consent.

Los Angeles poet Rick Lupert created the Poetry Super Highway (an online publication and resource for poets), and hosted the Cobalt Cafe weekly poetry reading for almost 21 years. He’s authored 26 collections of poetry, including “God Wrestler: A Poem for Every Torah Portion“, “I’m a Jew, Are You” (Jewish themed poems) and “Feeding Holy Cats” (Poetry written while a staff member on the first Birthright Israel trip), and most recently “I Am Not Writing a Book of Poems in Hawaii” (Poems written in Hawaii – Ain’t Got No Press, August 2022) and edited the anthologies “Ekphrastia Gone Wild”, “A Poet’s Haggadah”, and “The Night Goes on All Night.” He writes the daily web comic “Cat and Banana” with fellow Los Angeles poet Brendan Constantine. He’s widely published and reads his poetry wherever they let him.