poems and prose

Hate for Sale

Hate for sale.  All the very best
Hate for sale.  Vintage stuff.
Do my cries excite your interest?
Lovely hate. Your life is rough.

Buy my hate.  You'll come right back for more.
Hate for sale.  Enough to start a war.
Hate the rich, the brown, the black, the poor.
Hate is clean.  And hate will make you sure.

Hate for sale.  You'll feel superior.
Hate for sale.  You'll make the news.
Hate the families who come here fleeing war.
Hate the gay, the trans, the new, the Jews.

Don't need to care who you detest,
hate makes you feel a whit less scared,
to know your people are the best
and burn to ashes all the rest
who will not face the real test
but showed up naked, unprepared
to be sent back, or drowned or hurled
back into the abyss  Your world
will be safe, so clean, so great.
And all you needed was some hate.

Hate for sale.  All the very best
Hate for sale.  Vintage stuff.
Do my cries excite your interest?
Hate for sale.  Never enough.

by Neil Gaiman in the anthology It Occurs to Me That I Am America