Culpable
When DNA shunted a tad to the right
And the very first man got his very first sight
Of his chimpanzee brothers, less upright, less tall
With rocks preselected he bludgeoned them all
Man’s earliest crime from man’s earliest time
Civilisation? A very long climb.
So kill to survive became killing to win
The first creeping roots of perennial sin
One million years on he talks so he lies
His enemy lives so his enemy dies
One million years on he wants so he takes
His smile and his friendly demeanour are fakes
No-one knows when or from where it came
He harboured the concept of someone to blame
He had God and Gods but the field wasn't level
So he grasped at the notion of something called Devil
For thousands of years most of the crime
Was blamed on the Devil most of the time
Man raped and man pillaged, man tore man apart
And all for the Devil was in his black heart
They’d told it, then wrote it, then acted on stage
Finally Hollywood explained the rage
The Devil, he’s Satan, he’s Lucifer too
So nothing you do can be levelled at you
But what happened next has modern man vexed
The Devil shuns Facebook, nor does he text
He cannot inveigle or instigate grief
When the man of today has little belief
God is what happens at Easter and Christmas
The Devil’s not mentioned aloud nor in whispers
Satanic movies and tomes gather dust
Yet man’s ill intent stands proud and robust
No caveman, no spaceman and no John Doe can
Refute that an evil resides within man
His guilt is his own, be it malice or passion
Now that the Devil has gone out of fashion
_ _ _ _
[Inspired by my partner, Annie, who, as we flicked through
The channels looking for a movie to watch, said...
‘The Devil’s gone out of fashion’]
Copyright © Terry Flood | Year Posted 2021
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