Don't Shoot the Messenger

by B.T. Bonner


Dear Bill?
Can I take the time to let you know what's on my mind.
Take back your soul and maybe even make it to heavens door.

        I know that you're busy up there dictating
        the needs of our nation
        with oil dripping from your palms,
        carrying out foreign policy with children
        starving in our slums,
        and defending your good name
        when it's you who deserves the blame.

But I still wonder, with so many people displaced,
how in the hell do you keep your place,
        stand the taste,
                 or show your face.

Don't get me wrong,
this is not hate mail for the power which you hold,
and Not a letter bomb, but it's truth will explode.

I am not the scope'd gun that killed our Reverend,
The thrown switch that sparked the chair,
or the night stick that I must fear.

I don't shout
        Democrat or Republic,
                 Communist,
                        Idealist,
                                 Racist,
                                        or Terrorist.

I cry against
   The Police Brutality and Injustice
      that your eyes don't see,
         the Gun and Drug Infestations that live and breathe,
              and the Political Greed on which you feed.

Feast on this:

The Answers to the Questions you Fail to Ask Yourself,
Stand,   naked as the products of the policies
you ponder in pestilence,
Scream,  from the rooftops of the structures of our ghetto
neighborhoods,
and Fall,
victim to homelessness when our economic walls fall.

Oh shit! Now I can relate,
We're the terrorists with which you won't negotiate!
Not God's people, you and me,
but me enpoverished while you run free.
You Bastard Child, Spider Freak,
looking through his web of deceit,
With promises as far as the eye can see,
and screams you hear but refuse to see.


Don't Shoot the Messenger by B.T. Bonner

© Copyright 2000. All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be duplicated or copied without the expressed written consent of the author.


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