*

 

I watch a lot of movies about crimes.

 

I read about them.

 

*

 

I study them up.

 

*

 

I was thinking about Dierdre killing her first deer. I was thinking about the animals I’ve put down, those unknown to me and those much closer.

 

I was thinking about the dead folks I have seen, laid out in their slaughter before me.

 

 

I was thinking about them I have had in the box, getting them to tell me why.

 

*

 

 

I was thinking about my own terrible failures.

 

About all the ways I have done it up wrong.

 

*

 

I was thinking about rage and redemption. About loss and blindness and error and wrong.

 

How it is not foreign to us.

 

*

 

I sometimes I mostly feel that I am at the helm of a great wrong, mowing through the innocent of this world. Mowing down the inept and the broken, driving them against the rocks.

 

I feel I am doing it for the even more innocent.

 

*

 

 

And what comfort can there be in such an endeavor?

 

 

*

 

 

Cold comfort, if at all.

 

 

*

 

I am at the helm of a terrible machine.

 

 

Nor would I quit it.

 

 

*

 

 

Here come the rocks.

 

 

*

 

Namaste.

 

***