{"sf1_id":1702502,"sf2_id":"rm8dwWm0","title":"I Think About Revenge Most Every Day","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":324,"posted_at":"2021-04-03T06:14:00.000Z","tags":["Goof Troop","Iambic pentameter","Poetry","blank verse"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1702502-i-think-about-revenge-most-every-day","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/rm8dwWm0","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/ff/15/ff15914c-5cb4-4bf3-aa8b-8b50d221a42c","description":"#18 of poetry\n\nIf 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.\nRevenge is merely justice deprived of other options.\nI promise, the backlog of bleak angry stuff will be done with soon.","content":"I think about revenge most every day.\n\nI pray for it, to it. I draw its eye.\n\nI hive its hissing hornets in my heart.\n\nI wear its mask and mantle. People say\n\nThey do not understand how you can live\n\nLike that. No more do I! Yet nonetheless\n\nI must live like that somehow. People say\n\nThat you need to forgive, to turn the cheek,\n\nWhen what they really mean is that they would\n\nPrefer it if you did forgive, prefer\n\nThat you should turn your cheek. And people say\n\nTo let go before vengeance eats your soul.\n\nAnd right they would be, if we all were rich\n\nAnd lived in paradise, and never died.\n\nI think about revenge most every day.\n\nFor aye, revenge will gladly eat your soul.\n\nBut no more so than will despair, than grief,\n\nThan keeping silent as the fatted take,\n\nAnd oppress, and exploit, and gravely say\n\nThat we must all try harder not to take,\n\nThan wondering what it feels like to be safe,\n\nTo call for help and have that help appear,\n\nTo be defended. Is it any worse\n\nTo feed your soul to vengeance, than to these?\n\nAt least revenge gives something in exchange\n\nMore than the moral high ground. For what good\n\nHas moral high ground ever done for you?\n\nYou cannot plant a crop or build a house\n\nOn moral high ground. All they do up there\n\nIs crucify you. Those you leave behind\n\nWill think about revenge most every day.\n\nHow can they not? At least revenge will say\n\nThat wrong was wrong, and justice was not done.\n\nIs that not all that most of us can hope?\n\nNo, it should not be so, but there it is.\n\nWe are not rich. We live in this far land\n\nBeneath the trees, and not in paradise.\n\nAnd ere we die, we think about revenge\n\nBecause what else are we supposed to do?\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"poetry","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1702500-obituary-instructions.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1702504-i-switch-off-all-the-lights.json"}}