Victimblaming

There's a game that some play better than others, from which few can abstain...

Some play it forcefully, full tilt, pedal to the metal, their mettle tested

Others play passively, observing from the shadows, wall flowers, flowing with the go

     never seeming to commit, always aware,

but beware these players, 

     passive aggressively throwing their slugs,

     "yes sir, no ma'am, I'll do as you suggest sir,"

     They smile and look you in the eye, and they will comply if the cuffs come to shove

and their lawyers will post bail and they will survive and their charges will flutter unfettered to the floor.

Indignant, 

righteously so,

the forceful will glare in the face of their oppressors,

and they will sound their barbaric yaups

and be cut down in the street 

as their mother's weeping plays 

in the clips on the six o'clock news, 

and edited, 

they will stream in the minds of the armchair anarchists who wait their turn to play,

their ammo boxes bulging with brass casings.

And what the world needs now is love,

the halftime show begins calling upon providence and justice

and jesters sneer, mocking the causes and players of the game,

and prophets predict doom, looking to the dusty volumes of archaic wisdom,

and I'm the man in the middle of the field, trying to forfeit the game altogether,

but by some obscurity of the rules, conscientious objectors find no sanctuary, and we must choose sides, even when truth lies somewhere in the gray areas of the game.