Rushdie
By Russell Willis
His pen, the sword penetrating deep prejudice
even as his words drowned in his own blood
Blood drawn by a knife, a weapon of hate
wielded by a man one-third his age filled
with lifetimes of hate, generations of hate
stabbing deep with prejudice
reminding us that freedom of words
carries a heavy cost,
the heavy burden of all freedoms,
heavier yet when those entrusted
with the care of freedom
no longer care
Russell Willis won the Sapphire Prize in Poetry in the 2022 Jewels in the Queen’s Crown Contest (Sweetycat Press) and has published poetry in thirty online and print journals and twenty print anthologies. Russell grew up in and around Texas and was vocationally scattered as an engineer, ethicist, college/university teacher and administrator, and Internet education entrepreneur throughout the Southwest and Great Plains, finally settling in Vermont with his wife, Dawn. He emerged as a poet in 2019 with the publication of three poems in The Write Launch. Russell’s website is https://REWillisWrites.com