People have a Native Sympathy for Crooks

Double up with laughter, regale the tale,

or play the wit, add eye-popping details,

rejoice at the dolt who trusts the cheats,

marvel at the idioms used for deceits,

they lie to you, never write it in books,

people have a native sympathy for crooks.

Pick any epic, romance, any heroic tale,

entertainment follows a scoundrel's trail.

Be it for jest, or suspense, or raw charm

or to seduce a duchess at a duke's farm,

its him, its his cunning that the world salutes,

people have a native sympathy for crooks.

He often inspires more than a cheeky grin,

a hope in Joe or Jane, who're poor but alive,

who do what they can do, to just survive:

bribe and steal, use every conceit, lie, sin.

All find it titillating to hoodwink the sleuths,
people have a native sympathy for crooks.

Is mischief charming, is it a Freudian thing?

Do joys ensue from an addictive suffering?

Every holy book spends most of it rhymes

in detailing human failings or sinful times.
Why do we prefer wine over fruit juice?  
People have a native sympathy for crooks.

Movie audience bursts with awe or guffaws
as he partakes the best lines, guilty pleasures
throughout the saga, he, the breaker of laws
controls the reins, the keys to all treasures.

Only in the climax, unconvincing he looks,
people have a native sympathy for crooks.

Not Jesus or Buddha, but Krishna, Zeus, Dionysus

proclaimed that the life's sauce is Baronesque.

The crafty seem to win, while the honest wait

for karmic redemption, for delayed gifts, grace.

As they know, in the end, he'll going to loose,

people have a native sympathy for crooks.

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(First draft Jan 2014)