Look Closer

They have an odd way of thinking, don't they?
the pessimists, criminials,
the ones who are dirtied
with obscure thoughts and scrambled ideals backward to ours,
always sending back our ideas of
what is safe.

somehow always contributing to our lives
maybe through direct contact
or over the unsettling news casts
they are there and to some of us
they are breathing nightmares never met

And yet, once you
come across one
they'll usually look the same
wearing the face of the ordinary
with deepset wrinkle lines in their older years.

Look closer, if you dare to take the risk of
gaining in on the distances of your minds
but remember it's at your own discretion,
what would you do
if you couldn't write oneway sermons
to satisfy your inclinations to complain?

But when you find out
where they really stand
or crouch as compared
to where they thought they'd be
where propriety would place them,
you come to think
they should have markings
or flashing signs above their heads,

but no,
if you could meet them a few years back
past all the shame they should have felt
we're all really not that different
and perhaps that is what scares you
as if you see them as necessary evils,
somehow completing the hierarchy
of civilization.