the cop out

Denying nothing
Admitting everything

for years drifting along
another
late blooming fiend twirling
along his seam of Earth

shuffling
back and forth,
doing petty crimes
for petty times

just another
lurking stalking creeper,
another hunting
hapless chump

but then: he
was allowed to go back
they let him do that.
the extraterrestrials who came

said he was their game
and what would he do?
would he do the same?
if they sopped up his pain

and his insane chain of existence
and let him start forth again?

so
then there in the rain
there back in the long ago
outside her dark window

there in the streaming rain

beneath a sky not indigo,
but the color of ash
always the color of ash

his eyes were black blood
when the lightning flashed

and he did exactly the same
things

all over again