I Think About Revenge Most Every Day
#18 of poetry
If 2020 accomplished anything, let it be the gravedigging of the idea that revenge is a worse injustice than that which is avenged. That's the kind of rhetoric that's really suspiciously useful to anyone who wants people, in general, to not think about who has wronged them.
Revenge is merely justice deprived of other options.
I promise, the backlog of bleak angry stuff will be done with soon.
I think about revenge most every day.
I pray for it, to it. I draw its eye.
I hive its hissing hornets in my heart.
I wear its mask and mantle. People say
They do not understand how you can live
Like that. No more do I! Yet nonetheless
I must live like that somehow. People say
That you need to forgive, to turn the cheek,
When what they really mean is that they would
Prefer it if you did forgive, prefer
That you should turn your cheek. And people say
To let go before vengeance eats your soul.
And right they would be, if we all were rich
And lived in paradise, and never died.
I think about revenge most every day.
For aye, revenge will gladly eat your soul.
But no more so than will despair, than grief,
Than keeping silent as the fatted take,
And oppress, and exploit, and gravely say
That we must all try harder not to take,
Than wondering what it feels like to be safe,
To call for help and have that help appear,
To be defended. Is it any worse
To feed your soul to vengeance, than to these?
At least revenge gives something in exchange
More than the moral high ground. For what good
Has moral high ground ever done for you?
You cannot plant a crop or build a house
On moral high ground. All they do up there
Is crucify you. Those you leave behind
Will think about revenge most every day.
How can they not? At least revenge will say
That wrong was wrong, and justice was not done.
Is that not all that most of us can hope?
No, it should not be so, but there it is.
We are not rich. We live in this far land
Beneath the trees, and not in paradise.
And ere we die, we think about revenge
Because what else are we supposed to do?