“If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” – Abraham Lincoln

Don’t shoot the rats pillaging dumpsters,
or the man with rat-like eyes and rumpled
suit, who orders they be set ablaze.

Don’t shoot the gophers swallowing whole
your Begonias, or those bearing traps and
poison, come to strike them dead.

Don’t shoot the dull and shabby voices
that shout down birdsong, too dumb or proud
to tell loudness apart from truth.

Don’t shoot the addict, or the dealer;
those with too many homes or none at all;
the agents of a cruel and careless state.

Don’t shoot when the barrel stares you down,
the whole of your life narrowing to a point,
and angry crowds burst into laughter like

rifles that have lost their minds. Don’t shoot
when you, too, have lost your mind, and you
are told that what you saw is not what you saw,

and witnesses change their story, and history is
re-written, and prophets tell that every valley
shall be bombarded, every mountain be made

more deadly, and the One clothed with a robe
dipped in blood be detained and disappeared.
Don’t shoot the messenger.