“Bad guys don’t leave poems behind”
They acted out each thought
And someone always knows their schemes
But don’t do what they ought
Bad guys don’t leave musings
Fit for prizes that commend
Just details—panned as fiction
From childhood phases that don’t end
Bad guys don’t leave pleasant words
Their rhetoric was void
Of anything that edified
Or testified of joy
Bad guys had no need of rhymes
Their whimsy would betray
A soul so void of nurturing
Left unchecked every day
Bad guys don’t leave poems behind
But paint a picture, still
It’s odd how portraits replicate
As scripts of bad guys, will
Bad guys have the luxury
Of someone else’s words
That spin, sanitize, and excuse
What Truth would deem absurd
A “hero”, “saint”, a “victim”
A “nice” product of neglect
A “troubled, bullied loner”
Crying out for our respect
The crippling inability to just identify
What’s obvious; what’s common sense
Is never a surprise
Of all the words available
To aptly characterize
Kinsmen writers in denial
Will not pin to their bad guys
Bad guys don’t leave poems behind
They leave libraries of blame
That point to every blind eye turned
And they all look the same
So eager, with hindsight in tow
To tell of their suspicion
The balls they dropped; red flag ignored
That now fuel their contrition
Into cameras, they all recite
Most compassionately
How the latest bad guy
Deserves our sympathy
Bad guys don’t leave poems behind
What they leave us, are books
Thick volumes that, if only read—
If only we would look
It might prevent the anguish
Those who DO read, know will come
But shame, and fear, and ignorance
Inspire the oblivious
To canonize the dangerous
Whose poem, was a gun
Inspired by a quote by E.Ethelbert Miller
VRWc2024
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