TUESDAY THOUGHTS: POETRY PROMPT—-BAD GUYS

 

“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

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