Criminals

NOTE: I have planned to write a story as well as a poem related to the criminal underworld. This formed as the first in the plan.

When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in,

He has no choice but to become an outlaw,

I came from a real tough neighbourhood,

Once a guy pulled a knife on me,

I knew he wasn't a professional,

The knife had butter on it.

Don't compromise yourself - you're all you have,

Once I pulled a job, I was so stupid,

I picked a guy's pocket on an aeroplane and made a run for it,

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

All men make mistakes, but a go⁸od man yields,

When he knows his course is wrong and repairs the evil,

The only crime is pride,

There is not a crime, there is not a dodge,

There is not a trick, there is not a swindle,

There is not a vice which does not live by secrecy,

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit,

Until a man is a twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often,

That under the right circumstances he could be the saddest mothexxxxr in the world,

If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years,

If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge,

If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime,

If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good,

Each should have its own reward,

Good. Illegal is always faster,

Some people steal to stay alive,

And some steal to feel alive. Simple as that.

There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic,

The boundary between them is not clearly defined,

Criminals should be punished, not fed pastries.