I was standing with a group of friends
All of us chatting about our day
The tribulations of being alive
When along they came
The Gang
The fear gripped me like a vise
I'd heard about them
And now I could see it was all true
They had their own way of dressing
Like the young misfits they were
And talking
Almost as if they spoke their own language
And even the way they looked at people was different
As though they could see something the rest of us could not
We looked away so they wouldn't notice us staring
And tried to continue our conversation
But we should have known they wouldn't leave us alone
We decent citizens are always harassed by their kind
Sure enough
Their leader brought them straight to us
Like the rest of them, he was unremarkable in looks
A normal man appearing to be something more
Was it the gang that made him different
Or his presence that made this gang different?
I looked into his eyes and for a scant second
I thought I saw something that I wanted to hold
To feel
To accept
Then my friends were pulling me away
Whispering that the authorities should do something about that awful gang
Should not allow them to walk around frightening good, upright citizens such as ourselves
Were they right?
The authorities did catch the leader of the gang
They made the world safe by hanging him on a cross
A warning to his fellow gang members to stop scaring us
Stop being different
Stop believing in their strange ways
My friends say that good has triumphed
And you know
Somehow
In a way that our small minds will probably never grasp
I think they're right