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One Dumb Mistake
When young I made a dumb mistake
And was arrested by the cops.
I found myself alone in court.
Needless to say, my case was lost.
And I was sentenced by the judge
For murder: ten to twenty years.
In prison I had many years
To dwell on that one dumb mistake.
Raised on the streets I would mis-judge,
I had not planned to run from cops
Or shoot a boy because I lost
A game of hoops out on the court.
My youth now gone, no time to court
A wife or go to college, years
Of work to build a life are lost
Because I made one dumb mistake.
Now I am out, wary of cops.
I’m black and I know how they judge.
I’m home. I peek outside and judge
The law enforcement holding court
To be about a dozen cops.
But I’ve been good the last few years!
They break the door, “It’s a mistake!”
A fray ensues. My cries are lost.
In jail again and feeling lost.
But wait, the warrant from the judge
Was not for me! A grave mistake!
I’ll take those bastards straight to court!
I’ll pay them back for all those years!
I’ll sue for millions! Fuck the cops!
I filed my case against the cops,
But now I fear that all is lost.
You’d think that after all these years
That I would be a better judge
Of risk, but out there in the court-
Yard lies a stiff, my last mistake.
And as the cops move in I judge
I’ve lost again. The price in court
For one mistake? My final years.
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M.D. Skeen works as an attorney in Denver, Colorado.
Such a sad tale of what one mistake can cost a person and a warning to all of us at the gravity of all our actions taken in life. I suspect from your bio as an attorney, this may have been inspired by a case or cases you handled.
As I read the poem, the speaker has committed two major dumb mistakes. First he kills someone whose only offense was to beat him in a basketball game, and the second (mentioned in stanza 6) is that he has killed someone else in a courtyard — a deed that leads to his final conviction and imprisonment.
That’s what the words of the poem suggest to me as a reader. And this would indicate that the speaker really doesn’t deserve any sympathy, since he killed when he was young and then killed again when he was old.
I am very impressed by this poem, MD. You have inspired me to try writing a sestina poem. Great work!
This poem is great. I give credit to the poem for making me angry! From the point of view of the speaker, killing someone is a dumb mistake and the reason given , so trivial! He gives no thought to the years taken from his victims and only bemoans the fact that he has to give his final years for his dumb mistakes. And don’t even let me start on only ten or twenty years for murder. A brilliant poem that makes the composing look easy but I am sure it wasn’t. This poem deserves to be studied in schools, what do you think, have I got it wrong?
M.D., I think you’ve done a good job on this sestina. I actually used to think I didn’t like sestinas, and I’ve never written one. But I can see it takes its own kind of genius. I really like the different uses you’ve made of the word “court”, including courting a wife, and court-Yard.
The Poet’s take: Despite his protestations that his whole life has been destroyed by “one dumb mistake,” the narrator’s life is clearly riddled with mistakes, a reality which he is loath to admit and probably even recognize. As with many people who have been in and out of prison, he is very quick to minimize his own agency and blame the system, institutional prejudice, bad luck, and the actions of others. To what degree influences beyond his control have contributed to his misfortune and to what extent, if at all, he is deserving of sympathy is debatable. But his is human and as such a child of God, no matter how fallen, and perhaps someday he will come to terms with his life, repent, and return to the Lord. Everyone makes mistakes. The cops in the poem made a serious one, egregiously violating his 4th Amendment rights, for which he had a good chance of prevailing on a civil rights claim. But his poor judgment, violent tendencies, and knack for getting into horrible situations unsurprisingly torpedoed his chances of winning the lawsuit lotto.
A sestina is incredibly tough to get right. You do a decent job of putting it all together. I’d recommend “The Sesitna of the Tramp Royal” as an excellent one to read for leisure. The trick with a sestina is that the repetition of words runs seemlessly. I think you do a good job of that, well done!
This is a good sestina especially because the endwords are not simply repeated, but used in the slightly different senses each can carry. That kind of composition takes planning, starting with a careful choice of endwords for the subject. No matter the subject, sestinas ordinarily have a dull tone. It develops quickly and doesn’t change. That’s true here; nonetheless a consecutive story is told, and a character revealed over time. There is real action, which is often lacking. Good work!