What made you what you were?
So heartless and remorseless.
A killer since seed.
A hand-sown psychopath.
Guilty as charged.
You must have had a twisted youth
in a sapling gang.

Fourteen killed by you
since 1894.
All races, ages, and religions,
but mostly black and innocent.
You should have felt shame.
Your leaves should have shed
like endless tears
for all the death you dealt.

It angers me that you have lived so long
and died a quiet death,
between the apples and the cherries.
A serial killer,
an arboreal sinner in the sun,
unashamed.

Are you haunted by the dead
that dangled from your limbs?
By the ghosts
surrendered to the open sky by you?
What made you what you were?
Oh yeah,
right.
We did.