“If police can execute an innocent man on video, none of us are safe.”
—Buck Sexton, The Hill, December 11, 2017
Sweet Security, that phantasmal beauty, lies buried 6 feet under.
I saw the body-cam footage, how her sister,
Paranoia, shot her dead—
don’t watch
spiders scrawl warnings on flesh, listen:
Paranoia laughs, freed from cuffs
of assumed innocence.
Witness her lie on the motel bed, her bare,
thin lips exposed in a cavernous grin,
her adamantine teeth.
She bites hard, man.
Cops claim she’d hidden the rifle under the bed, but
no one dared lift the sham,
confirm the threat.
Paranoia, hungry cougar, prowls. Growls feed me.
Her cousin, Injustice, that crack whore,
trolls the subway,
steals candy from fatherless kid’s pockets,
feeds the family sugar power-drops,
lollipops on dirty sticks,
prefers home-baked shortbreads dipped
in ghetto chocolate, rich and dark.
They all sit on Daddy’s knee,
cuz Mama Liberty
drowned in the harbor, fascist bling chains round her neck,
her tablet cracked, her gown stained black
by pigeon shit.
Everyone runs blind.
Crystal Snoddon is a Canadian writer, whose forthcoming and previous poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net, and can be found in Figroot Press, Rat's Ass Review, Anti-Heroin Chick, among others.
