Poem 2

His grubby finger traced a meandering wood grain on the old park bench.
Preparing to settle in for a frigid evening, he drank a shot of stinging cheap whiskey.
Drunk and sleepy, he was alarmed to see a strange face glaring at him.
"Did I startle you?" asked the feeble well-dressed stranger with a cane.

He did not want conversation, did not want interaction.
He mumbled unintelligibly, averted his eyes, and pretended to be passed out.
"You don't fool me" whispered the upstanding stranger.
"Those tattered dirty clothes are just a costume. Your someone's son."

At that, he tried to scare the stranger. "Get off of my bench, or I'll stick this knife in your neck."
He didn't have a knife, but men like the stranger were always scared of dirty boys with knives.
Men like the stranger only wanted one thing from boys like him in the park.
Surely the stranger would leave now, and he could finally rest.

The stranger delicately reached into his pocket and pulled out a shiny silver gun.
He aimed it at the dirty teen and said, "I had a son just like you and a worrying wife once."
"She committed suicide, and now I have no one. This is for your mother"
With that, the stranger shot him in the head.

The dirty teen slumped over, blood dripping down the rails of the park bench,
Making patterns as it mingled with the dark wood grain he'd been tracing moments earlier.
The stranger gingerly put the gun back in his coat and walked away.
He was a new man now, a killer.