Criminal Minds

 

 

Criminal Minds

 

 

Through protracted intimidation,

meant to guide us into believing in their doubtful purposes,

entwined within their seamier affairs,

the impure rowdies

spend days intruding into restricted regions,

victimizing.

 

Earthy wildings who have no cuddly innocence.

They try to carry on unsupported routs,

and they respond to the rest of the world

with not even a felon pledge to each other.

 

From abstruse hoodlum to front page menace 

struggling to find new isolating aliases,

they plan and participate in riotous robberies.

Their armed verocity can be excessive, and in all cases, is unnecessary.

 

Once captured and confined,

they all look as if they subjected themselves to the same haircutting hoop,

have found similar ways to ink their skin,

while pacing to and fro inside outlined yards 

after so many savage wrongs.

 

Only a horizontal manifesto quiets them permanently.

In the interim, they scream and complain

that their lot in life has become out of their control.

Shoulda, coulda, woulda stands as empty mottos

when positioned against a landscape of casualties.

And, their last sanctimonious avenue of defense 

is that none of this is any of our business.

 

Linda Imbler

 Linda Imbler’s poetry collections include six published paperbacks: Big Questions, Little Sleep, Big Questions, Little Sleep” second edition, 

Lost and Found, Red Is The Sunrise, Bus Lights, Travel Sights, and Spica’s Frequency.  Soma Publishing has published her four e-book collections, 

 Sea’s Secret Song, Pairings, a hybrid of short fiction and poetry, That Fifth Element, and Per Quindecim. Examples of Linda’s poetry and a listing 

of publications can be found at lindaspoetryblog.blogspot.com.  

In addition to writing, she helps her husband, a Luthier, build acoustic guitars and steel strings. They are currently working on number 10.