READING, WRITING, & RIFLES *

The Minnesota school year starts– high hopes!

Kids greet old friends, begin a brand new grade,

their backpacks filled with new crayons and glue sticks.

Morning begins with Mass. The students pray

together, sharing optimism and faith—

until the gunfire starts.  Round after round

sprays through a stained-glass window, firing wild.

Two kids are killed, and 18 more are wounded.

Terror, shock, and panic fill the church.

One boy, shielding his friend, shot in the back.

A wounded girl keeps pleading, “Hold my hand.”

There’s no escape. The shooter barred a door

with a 2X4. Brought three guns. Used them all—

a rifle, shotgun, pistol. Perfect tools

for someone standing outside, shooting in.

Just like the shooter’s heroes in the news.

It takes a lot of hate to mow down children—

faces bright with eagerness and promise.

What kind of mind resents their zest and joy?

Seeks only to destroy, destroy, destroy?

And why can some young person filled with rage

buy gun after gun after gun– no questions asked?

This feast of hate was crowned by suicide.

Without guns, toxic hate would not be fatal.

*  On August 27, 2025, a sniper shot through a Church window at children attending a Mass that opened the school year for Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis. Two dead, 18 wounded.

ICE WELCOMES STRANGERS

ICE targets brown—brown eyes, brown hair, brown skin.

Storm troopers drag whole families from rich fields,

leaving crops half-picked. These bounty hunters

seize brown workers from construction sites,

hotel staffs, work crews, courts, meat-packing plants.—

disrupting businesses, creating holes

that can’t be filled. A green card’s not a shield.

Even immigration court’s not safe.

Brown workers hide, afraid of ICE’s thugs.

On streets, masked gunmen driving unmarked vans

jump out, grab targets, drive off– sowing fear.

ICE operates like mob enforcement gangs.

Fills up detention camps with immigrants

who work, pay taxes, send their kids to school,

send money home to families in need.

Some holding cells are clean, at least. But one—

the Alcatraz built in the Everglades–

a hell-hole! Florida’s new pride and joy.

Who works for ICE? Enjoys the snatch-and-grab–

strong-arming, terrorizing, playing rough?

These Christian soldiers, battling immigrants,

feel justified. Just get the vermin out!

When preachers drag up that old bible verse,

“I was a stranger, and you welcomed me…” *

the words bounce off. That propaganda’s woke!

A better watchword’s this: thou shalt not covet

thy neighbor’s country. Look out—here comes ICE!

* Matthew 25:35