In The Crosshairs

Everywhere they instruct you on who to hate. 

Believe it!  It’s our government!  It’s for your own good!


Fingers point as hate battles your thoughts.

Brown people, Moslems, Jews are taking your rights away!


Queer people, Mexicans, Liberals are stealing your jobs!

Sick people, immigrants, the poor are eating your food!

Journalists who tell real news, women who expect

autonomy over their body parts – hate hate hate!


They can’t stop vomiting up their hatred all over you.

Fear and loathing grin from every corner.


Then they plant assault rifles in your town, crowing

“You Second Amendment people can take care of this”

and “I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and still…”


Suddenly people are wearing bold red targets

on their heads as ravenous hate bathes roads, ditches,

schools and churches in easy greasy red.


There are crosshairs looking for you next.


J. Pratt-Walter, © 2019

Being Found

 You can’t play hide and seek

with yourself forever.

Eventually the thunder reaches into

your secret hollows and slumbering roots.

   

       Eventually

       the years jump out to meet us,

       whether we accept them or not.

The rest of the task is learning which side

a gate opens out on while unlearning

what it meant to be lost.

J. Pratt-Walter, ©  2019

Notice

If you are grinding through this world

seeking all those magical truths,

your eyes are stopped unless

you pause to notice


the clasp and tallying eyes of a

praying mantis


or how a bean seed shoulders up

its horseshoe curve and tastes the air and rain

before committing its leaves


or how huckleberries talk

like fairies to the coming Autumn

then drop.


J. Pratt-Walter, © 2019