bad choices

though bad choices early on

made the man you see before you

he walked his path, he did his time &

now he has experience,

so as to make the most out of himself,

to seize the life that had been stolen &

to find a way to get himself through

without doing what he had been doing---

but second chances do not always come &

even when one thinks that they have been

granted,

they can be snatched away at any time,

as one is always walking around with a record,

a file of some sort being dragged behind them,

attached by those who can’t mind their own

f*****g business &

it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell when the gig is up,

all it takes is a coward who sits behind the counter &

tells the man who’d set himself straight

that the job he had been working so hard at is now to be

taken from him,

because of something he did long long ago &

that he paid for in more ways than he cares to remember---

so his life is torn up again &

into shreds & tatters, he walks back out into the street

with a world that has no use for him,

a world that gives him nothing in return for his

“best behavior” &

what comes next

will be blamed entirely on him,

what comes next

will be seen as horrific by all those who

wouldn’t let the past stay in the past &

what bad choices bestowed upon him

will come flying back

just as the boomerang.