Neighborhood Watch

"I was just doing my job," he said
Blue blood turned black in tainted rightness
"That kid had no business here,
What was he doing with all that candy?
Why was he acting guilty of a crime?
No sense in these people and now they wanna lock me up...
Pray for me, because my sins are yours
I did nothing blameworthy."
FREE HIM FREE HIM
SERVE JUSTICE
The trial will always be Correct.

***

I miss the days when the Neighborhood Watch man, the shadow on the sign
Did not wear a baseball cap
Instead he had a fedora and a trench
To show that he was one of us
High-class, like the private dicks
Face shadowed.
We were confident that the shadow would soon reveal to us a mirror;
A laughable assumption of difference.
Or did it really mean that he was dark?
Dark as in carrying past crimes
Or born with that Curse they never admit to
Did it mean that he was from the wrong Neighborhood
And he forgot to watch?
May only those protected by the angels of children and madmen
Venture where they don't fit in.

So sad to say, I watched.
I paid attention.

8/26/14

Comedian

In all that seeming unfurled
I looked for myself in so much of your prose, just because I was an egotist.
That year, I played a hobbled man onstage
Clowning in Italian and Turkish
Long, garish vegetables hanging from my mouth and balloons on my shorts
I played coy but was obsessed with you remembering the beautiful
I hobbled, insulting the handicapped.

Priest and pastor went unquenched,
Rabbi full of spontaneous rhythm and flatulence
Rastafari shaking their tambourines.
Who lives in this display?
I was just there as the doorman/woman and emcee of debauched cabaret...
The psychedelics held their sway.

No stage door romance, for that was too wild for my quiet thoughts
My severe cell, witnessed when all were all-but-looking
Answered by prayers of routine.
The man who knocks at dressing-room is always the same, and he will never love me.

It was my love for no one else that made me write.
So never were my secrets hidden;
So often was I kept in doubt.
The simplest way to hide me was directly in front of you.

8/25/14