Evil Is

[jurisprudent]

Evil is
Not the devil
Burning in red
Tracing ashes, breathing fumes
Crawling in nightmares
Sneaking in the shadows
Cast by your lamp.
Evil is
Not the hand that will pull a trigger on an innocent
Not the drunk driver that will tear you to pieces
While you cross the street.
Evil is
Not the son that will forge the will
Of an estranged father.
Evil is
Not the lover that will assault
His cheating lover’s other lover.
Evil is
Inside my palm
Inside your collar bone
Inside the red blood cells
Inside the thought sheltered by accommodating mind.
Evil is
Not a momentous spark. It is everyday ritual
Like throwing the litter
Washing your hands
Little drops that build up giants.
Evil is
Not to have a cause when you can have a cause
Not to speak up when you can speak up
Not to open your eyes when your eyes beg to open them up
Not to say a word when the words invade your lips
Not to dream when the dreams wildly possess your thoughts.
Evil is
A mirror image of what a so called ‘good’ may be
Might have been
Could have been
Should have been
Must have been
If it were not failed
If it were done
On time.
Evil exists
Only if its mirror image sleeps
A thousand years long
Sleep of appeasement.

[Jerrybaldy]

I don't feel I've learnt from this what evil is. It was a big ask

[Jerrybaldy]

Is it evil to cut a baby's throat? What if it were baby Adolf

[Silas Thorne]

An imaginative journey, with a lot of good phrases in it.

Everyone wants to write a poem that has the solution to the world in it, that's okay. As a poem though, you might want to use thinner brushstrokes, to avoid it turning into rhetoric.

Watch the line-breaks:

'It is everyday ritual
Like throwing the litter
Washing your hands'

The lack of punctuation here makes it a little confusing.

[kiz_paws]

Evil is
Not the devil
Burning in red
Tracing ashes, breathing fumes
Crawling in nightmares
Sneaking in the shadows
Cast by your lamp.
Evil is
Not the hand that will pull a trigger on an innocent
Not the drunk driver that will tear you to pieces
While you cross the street.
Evil is
Not the son that will forge the will
Of an estranged father.
Evil is
Not the lover that will assault
His cheating lover’s other lover.
Evil is
Inside my palm
Inside your collar bone
Inside the red blood cells
Inside the thought sheltered by accommodating mind.
Evil is
Not a momentous spark. It is everyday ritual
Like throwing the litter
Washing your hands
Little drops that build up giants.
Evil is
Not to have a cause when you can have a cause
Not to speak up when you can speak up
Not to open your eyes when your eyes beg to open them up
Not to say a word when the words invade your lips
Not to dream when the dreams wildly possess your thoughts.
Evil is
A mirror image of what a so called ‘good’ may be
Might have been
Could have been
Should have been
Must have been
If it were not failed
If it were done
On time.
Evil exists
Only if its mirror image sleeps
A thousand years long
Sleep of appeasement.

Oh I liked this indeed!
Well done.

[kiz_paws]

Is it evil to cut a baby's throat? What if it were baby Adolf

I'm sorry, but I feel compelled to ask: What the heck?!

[Jerrybaldy]

Sorry thought it was self explanatory. Killing a baby epitomy of evil. If you could travel back in time and find yourself by the cot of baby Adolf it wouldn't be. Evil is a perspective. We however we are see the twin towers event as evil. Others see it as a victory. We see good and evil only from our perspective. But that doesn't define it. Blah blah. Ends justifying means etc. We are all whores to our own subjectivity. Etc

[jurisprudent]

Thanks for your comments, all.

The underlying idea was that people imagine evil as taking the form of 'bad', 'ugly', 'monstrous' etc. events. Adolf, Auschwitz, Stalin, etc. While I started thinking that 'evil' is more like an attitude towards life - to allow what you believe is not right to take place.

Baby Adolf is a bit far fetched. Adolf is result of society, as a baby he was a tabula rasa and could not have been evil. And if he were killed, another one would have merged. A Hitler would have been there in the 30s and the 40s just because there were social and political conditions for this. Same for Mussolini, etc. And this goes back to my idea - evil is not something intrinsically evil while but rather a result of our approach, attitude, behaviour towards life.