The Art of Hate

By Russell Willis

Masquerading as instinct
something ingrained, embedded
in the mind
the heart
or soul
reflexive 
triggered as fight or flight

But not

Not instinct

A choice it is
this thing called hate 
a decision made by someones
then shared
decisions
strings of decisions
whole family trees of decisions
begging the question
when the choice was not to love
to lie and add to the lie
to fight or run away from Them

Out of all the sights and smells and tastes and touches and sounds
of those I Know or think I Know that I can’t bide 
the sights or smell or taste or touch or sound of
or even the thought of You being a Them

Art it is
when practiced and honed
no fleeing now
only looking back
reinforcing
overpainting or erasing
at will
abandoning truth for convenient lies
then not so convenient
lie stacked on lie
this caricature masquerading as portrait
this convincing ourselves that this
looks, smells, tastes, feels, sounds wrong beyond reason
beyond Reason, yet reasoned that
I must hate
and therefore I must fight
or, more likely, 
I must have someone else
fight for me
even if they don’t share my hate
as long as they share the lie

Wondering from time to time if 
we left instinct long ago
in pursuit of art
rendering this world we 
live in now and then pass on
as a shadow of what might have been
a caricature of life
fear masquerading as Truth

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Ethicist and online education entrepreneur, Russell Willis, emerged as a poet in 2019. Russell grew up in and around Texas, was vocationally scattered throughout the Southwest and Great Plains for many years, and is now settled in Vermont with his wife, Dawn.