Hate Vacuuming

Hate Vacuuming? By Mark Stucky Vacuum cleaners are pneumatic nobles, built to cleanse our offices and homes, sucking dust from floors and crevices to discard in trash cans (where dirt belongs). What if we could also build a machine to vacuum hate from our world and to hurl hate into hell (where hate belongs)? What if it could suck base instincts from souls of supremacists and mass shooters, mute divisive talk shows, podcasts, and politicians, and permanently delete dark social media posts? From each of us, would it also siphon out grievances, grudges, prejudices, and pain, with torturous psychological turbulence... but then heal us as our last dastardly dust bunnies disappear? To heal ourselves, our communities, our nations, can we really assemble that marvelous machine? Can tools of truth, justice, and love help us to eradicate hate? (First published in Peace Like A River (Valiant Scribe Anthologies), Dec. 2022. See also my poems "Closed Community Prejudice (an Alphabetized Memoir)," "Races," and "Weapons of Wonder.")