POEM - A Note from the Nuclear Rogue

I have known the longing to kill a man

over the most minor of transgressions

And I have felt the cold release of rage

from physicality upon seeing red

But neither of these things offer solutions

to life’s problems, so much as they do

create new (and often larger) ones

  

That you have the power to squeeze

the breathing spark out of another person,

doesn’t mean you need said power;

save the extremes of self-defense,

or for protection of the disadvantaged;

as the best show of strength lies not in

destruction, but rather construction

Better to gain a friend where a lesser man

would be burying a body

Better to not persist in fear of imprisonment

where you could simply afford yourself

the peace of avoiding revenge

For in a world where the shared outlook

is one of ‘an eye for an eye’,

what you’d soon find is that the gift of vision

would pass needlessly into memory

  

The hard swallow is that justice fails

when the guilty lose all prospects

of redemption,

because each of us are tasked with chaining

the worst inside of our selves

But some are never given the support

of believing themselves capable of as much

And we will not reach that better tomorrow

by looking to the worst in yesterday’s ways