Cop Sonnet
By Keith Welch
We’d like to think that all our cops are fearless
that their well-trained minds are sharp and quick
but certainly they’re worse than useless unless
they can tell a pistol from a stick
Or when a suicidal person’s begging
for an ending to their tortured grief
does a policeman’s duty include abetting
desire for a terminal relief?
The cops who will not see us as their equals
will never act as though our lives, too, matter
and so we’ll go on seeing violent sequels
where more of us will end up dead or battered
Of course the real problem: our society;
the driving force: our middle-class anxiety.
Keith Welch lives in Bloomington, Indiana, where he works at the IU Bloomington Herman B Wells Library. He poetry has been published in Writers Resist, Literary Orphans, and Dime Show Review. He is currently writing a series of poems about how much he hates the winter in Indiana. Read more of Keith’s work at librarymole.wixsite.com/keithwelchpoetry and follow him on Twitter @Outraged_Poet.
Photo Credit: You can’t barricade an idea by Dying Regime via a Creative Commons license.