THE DYER’S HAND

            With peace and love and kindness as our norm,
            Those traits to which we’ve promised to conform
            Why is it that for “entertainment” we
            Watch movies filled with mayhem’s misery?

            Is it to teach a lesson and appall
            Us with reminders of our fabled Fall
            Lest we forget there’s something in each soul
            That’s dangerous if we lose self-control?

            Is it a way we may inoculate
            Our vulnerable selves against a venomous fate
            By witnessing in fiction what in fact
            Would kill us if we were the ones attacked?

                 That this is wrong, the Bard once told us why:
                 The dyer’s hand is colored by the dye.

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