HOSTILE ACRES
I help till the soil at Hostile Acres.
Almost everyone carries a gun except me.
Tried to learn once.
Almost shot my big toe off.
Some people came looking for work the other day.
Didn't take long until the hired hands began talking:
"They're taking our jobs."
"How do you know whether or not they're American?"
"Make them carry IDs."
"What about injecting digitized guest-worker chips under their skin?"
"Let's just tattoo a citizenship barcode on their forearms."
And so on and so forth.
Then a few shots rang out.
This is what I heard a few minutes later:
"It was a lone nutcase with a gun."
"The nut's still alive."
"No, he's dead for sure."
"Thank God we can carry guns in public for protection.
The maniac got dropped
and we just let him bleed out."
"There was a little boy caught in the crossfire.
Don't know who shot him.
Don't know how he got hit."
Next day, we heard the President
on the field radio
saying that, at the very least,
automatic weapons should be banned
from use by the general public.
A chorus of disapproval:
DON'T TAKE OUR GUNS AWAY!!
NO GUNS, NO SAFETY!!!!
WE'LL BE KILLED FOR SURE!!
HE'S NOT OUR PRESIDENT!!
And so on and so forth.
Then I heard a round of gunfire.
The radio was destroyed immediately.
The overseer yelled:
PUT AWAY YOUR GUNS!
And we went back to work
tilling the soil at Hostile Acres--
happy to hear nothing
except the sounds of our own voices
voicing the beliefs
we don't need education for
because we know in our guts
how right we are.
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