If I had a sheriff’s badge
I would use it liberally.
Speaking to everyone,
Deputizing half the town.
Nightsticks and guns would be
Thrown into garbage cans and
Tar pits, with dinosaur bones.
We would not need them around.
My posse and I would use cell phones
And our keen powers of observation
To watch out for the children,
And the women who were easy to carry.
We would surround the neighborhood
With “watch” signs, and keep ourselves ready
To alert the rest of the people, to keep
Everyone safe. If I had a sheriff’s badge.
No more water hosing or truncheons beaten on bare feet,
no nightsticks cracking skulls on Bowery streets.
No cold water straitjackets or rubber padded rooms,
no laudanum doses sweeping minds like a broom.
Now its pretentious centers deluxe
brazenly charging big bucks
for twenty-eight days of schmoozing
to turn off the boozing,
and swallowing mega-vitamin pills
to ward off the chills,
or sit in circles with stories to tell
from like-minded survivors of hell.
More humane we're trying to be
even offering treatment for free
but it is still a choice at any cost.
To choose a sober life or, to an early death be lost.
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