It’s so easy to kill a human being.
Flash, bang, little moan, meaty thud.
Seven billion creatures on this planet.
One less? Who cares.
People come to me with their problems.
I play the game, I deliver the goods.
Day ends, I go home to a loving wife
Lying dead on the floor.
Too many holes in her head.
Who? Why?
It’s too easy to kill a human being.
Seven billion people on this planet.
Sometimes the game you play
Ends up playing you.
One less. Who cares?
What a sad, sad poem. Are you practicing writing as a nihilist?
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I wrote this poem in 2005-ish. The phrase “sometimes the game you play ends up playing you” came first (very Fight Club-esque, now that I think about it) and the rest of the poem came afterwards.
Looking back on this poem now, I like it quite a bit because I believe it shows the development of empathy in my heart. A child looks at a professional killer and thinks, wow, that’s cool. A cold-blooded assassin who, as the poem puts it, plays the game and delivers the goods. But an adult looks at the same person with terror. This is a person who ends peoples’ lives, turns spouses into widowers or widows and children into orphans. This is not a cool person, this is a bad person, and the game he plays is not a game.
To have the “game” come home to roost and the player played shows an understanding that I needed to reach in order to transition from the child into the adult. The fact that it’s a sad poem is good because it SHOULD be a sad poem. The real tragedy would be if it were not.
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