A knot of amateur poets huddled around a table in a bookstore that doubled as
a coffee house. The air in the room felt heavy, charged with the static of a televised war news.
Outside, rain streaked upon the windows like blurred headlines. Inside, a muted television
flickered above some Iraq war footage looping in grainy repetition. Steam curled upward from
mismatched mugs as the room hummed with anti-Bush rhetoric. Tim cleared his throat, holding
a poem he wrote with a casual hand, speaking with a mixture of anger and jest.
Prayer for Bush
I beseech the saints and skeptics alike—
to pray for George Walker Bush,
friend to some, fiend to others.
May George find grace and greater wisdom
instead of mouthing pulpit-polished mushy mush.
May You, O God of inconvenient truths,
untwist his tangled conscience
and reboot his rusted compass
with a progressive push.
Blast the bunker of blindness beneath his brow,
& break the brash, brittle bravado,
& provide him with a moral push.
May the thousands he has orphaned praying for revenge
unclench their fists, & find forgiveness and magnanimity
instead of scorn-fueled attempted putsches.
Most of all, Dear Lord, I pray
others will stop using Your Name in vain
cuz when hatred or greed are veiled as piety
it amounts ta a spiritual am-
Bush
Tracing the rim of her cup slowly with a sigh, Terri spoke. "This author is sadly poisoned.
anytime hatred enters our hearts, it infects everything it touches. Hatred doesn’t just
target its enemy: it seeps inward and corrodes." She exhaled, watching her breath fog the surface of her tea. "It’s a slow, toxic leak."
Sam leaned back in his chair, which creaked in mild protest. A crooked smile tugged at his mouth,
though his eyes were earnest. "Actually, doesn't Bush need all of the prayers he can get?
If he is as lost as this poem suggests, isn't he deeply in need of light and grace?"
He tapped the table gently and added. "You don’t pray for saints. They’ve already been canonized."
Ted let out a sharp breath through his nose as his voice tightened with an abrasive edge.
"This isn't a prayer, Sam. It’s performance. Moreover, I find it hard to muster a hallelujah
for Bush because his dirty fingerprints are on so many war crimes. War crimes don’t dissolve
in holy water. Should we pray for bloody butchers like Bush and ignore his victims?"
Kris folded her hands, thumbs pressed together, then spoke gently and steadily. "That is
precisely why you must pray for him." Her voice carried no mockery—only a steady, almost
unsettling compassion. "You don't pray for the healthy; you pray for the plague-ridden."
Tim looked directly at Ted with an unreadable expression. "Bush is just a mirror, Ted.
He represents that streak of blind, brittle self-righteousness that lives in all of us.
If you peel back the layers of your own skin and look closely enough, you’ll find that same foolish arrogance within your own heart."
Ted’s fingers tightened around his mug. His knuckles blanched. "Do I really need you to
tell me what’s in my own heart?" he scowled. "War criminals should be named. Historical
records should not be white-washed." He looked toward the rain-streaked window. "Accountability matters."
Outside, a thunderclap rolled low and distant. Inside, the poets sat suspended between
satire and sincerity, between fury and forgiveness, grappling with the uneasy question of
what prayer really means in an age of banners, bombs, and blurred moral lines.
