Sometimes surviving is the best revenge,
especially when murder's been attempted.
I'll live to dance on your grave you have vowed
when homicide in self-defense has tempted.
Even when he's been led off in prison orange
while everyone hands you the martyr's crown
and you try to look modest, feeling proud,
with hands flat at your sides, with eyes turned down,
justice has not been done. Nor will it be.
Others had died before the fool met you.
If only they could join the dance, to see
young convicts line up, beat him black and blue,
justice might seem to sprout up like the tree
whose trunk he cut, and sprayed with poison, too.
This topic is too close to real life to provide much fun, actually, but I do thank the Poets & Storytellers United for proposing it. For the gruesome details, see the past six months of this blog. For the denouement, wait another year.
Celiacs of the world, hang tough, and pray that Secretary Kennedy will be guided to hand us Bayer and Chemchina, on a silver platter, as neatly as he handed old Granola Greens the bans on food additives they've wanted since 1972.
I hope the poem provided a bit of emotional relief. What a hideous crime he committed!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you. A bit of relief, indeed. It's not over yet, but at least an end is in sight.
DeletePK
Thank God we have poetry to act as a safety valve when the world hands us too much pressure to have to cope with... A painful poem that lets off the steam of a fiery experience...
ReplyDeleteYes.
DeletePK
Kill him before he kills you next time is the way their "game" seems to be. Any more, at least, it's likely not to be a 'he'.
ReplyDeleteWe aren't talking about gang people here either. Nor really just killing when it is against skin color, religion, low rent or even street folk, etc.
Often it's a "they" and I'll never know for sure...My Bad Neighbor is a he all right. My third cousin. Was at school with me during his last and my first year. Made some money by being a Bad Neighbor in Tennessee and thought he could do the same thing here. We know he's been reckless with chemicals and is at the center of a cluster of possibly "pesticide"-related premature deaths. We know he intentionally used glyphosate to harm me and damage my property. We don't know (a) whether he knew that I'm Priscilla King of Glyphosate Awareness or (b) whether Bayer supplied him with chemicals. Nor do we know what he intentionally used to poison neighborhood cats--it was not glyphosate.
DeleteWe do know the motives: first greed, and then personal hostility when the nasty pranks started to backfire.
But the last line's literally true. One of this creep's little pranks was to attempt, TWICE, to kill the Famous Feral Elberta peach tree. It has baby peaches growing on it today.
DeletePK
Good luck to those with celiac issues or any long term medical issues.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Celiac "disease" should flip back to being a super-power gene soon, because glyphosate is losing all effect on "weeds" and glufosinate's proved too toxic to humans...but we still lack protection against other poisons that may be as bad, or worse, for some other minority of people with some other trait.
DeletePK
A thoughtful and carefully handled poem - It conveyed so many feelings - Jae
ReplyDeleteThank you Jae. (I read your poems regularly but Google blocks my comments because I block cookies.)
DeletePK