Sympathy For The Devil

Another bomb blows up another part of town in another country another month, and I look at you.

I watch the splattering of blood, the ripping apart of metal and the shattering glass panes, and I smile at the devastation unfolding. I hear the silence in the still millisecond immediately afterwards and I pause to listen in. I hear the rising clatter of shrill cries, the heart-wrenching wails of disbelief and that cry that marks the beginning of the realization.

It is the realization of calamity, of an abrupt, unforeseen shift in life, and I smile to myself as I see you wade through all this.

What is it? What is this you call your sorrow? These shouts, these screams. Is it this physical discomfort that troubles you? A broken leg or a dislocated shoulder? A few burns and a head injury?

Is it the shock that scares you? The sudden explosion and the loud noise that shatters your ear drums? Is it a helpless inability to deal with this evil, which has suddenly chosen you as a victim, that shocks you? Leaves you senseless and numb, until a shriek of primal horror escapes from somewhere within you? Really, is it that?

What is this you call your pain and your suffering? You pathetic mortals! What do you know of evil? What do you know of strife, of war, of loss or of wretched pyrrhic success? You can not recognize the face of evil anymore. It is a face that you have grown accustomed to. It is the champion of your existence, and an Atlas to your world. It has seeped into your system, replacing a gear here and fixing a fault there.

It has now become your system. You are an evil.

So don't blame me for what you bring upon yourself. I only smile at you now, as I watch you go about your works. I'm not the evil you can call the cause of your woes and your miseries. I'm not the evil that wishes you misfortune. I'm not the evil that attacks your loved ones or takes away your reasons to live. I am not an evil. I'm just a counterbalance.

I shall wash your sins at the very end, the end of it all. I shall have to deal with the poison in your system. I will live with you, with the utterly despised part in you. In all of you. And I, you say, am the Devil.

As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer.

And if you meet me, have some courtesy. Have some sympathy, and some taste. Use all your own well learned politesse, or I'll lay your soul to waste!