Sestina: Mind Of A Killer Poem by Richard St. Clair

What dark thoughts fill a killer’s mind
To perpetrate that heinous deed
Without a thought of guilt, regret
Or stinging punishment, or dread
For his own life in prison spent
Because of all the woe he caused?

Imagine what torment had caused
That person to acquire a mind
Which could have been far better spent
In nobler thought and word and deed
And surely would recoil in dread
From causing even slight regret.

When Cain killed Abel, much regret
His jealous action might have caused
himself — a looming cloud of dread
That could have plagued his guilty mind
As he reviewed the selfish deed
On which his innocence was spent.

We judge our taxes poorly spent:
In backlash guilt do we regret
That laws cannot reverse the deed
That our dysfunction may have caused,
Engendering a killer’s mind
That fills our very hearts with dread.

But, other than from his own dread,
How could his life have been mis-spent
Pursuing in his darkling mind
The ways to make us all regret
The mayhem he has rudely caused
By dint of his most wanton deed?

Yes, irreversible the deed,
Profound the lingering thoughts of dread
The murderer has sorely caused;
Misguided effort he has spent
To maximize untold regret,
The product of his tragic mind.

But though the killer’s deed was spent
In spreading dread and dire regret,
He caused more harm to his own mind.