"The Haiku Becomes Monologue"

Thick warm blood oozes
through sharp blades of summer grass.
The white palms turn red.

The handcuffs slide on
lifeless wrists as the walkies
chirp the protocol

five minutes too late.
An officer coughs softly
while the last breath leaves.

Did they hesitate?
Or to earn a badge, must one
make murder instinct?

Twenty-two years old.
That’s thirty-four months life per
bullet in body.

Sometimes at night I
wonder how many people
must become numbers

or songs or whispered
warnings of what could happen
or even poems

before we realize
alchemy is a science
best left to those who

think about such things
for a living, not the ones
comforted by ghosts.

After all, if the
cops are not philosophers
then naturally

they will make mistakes,
this cannot be avoided,
for sometimes there is

just a cell phone in
the wrong place at the wrong time.
These things happen.

The watchmen are not
scientists, so how could they
test hypotheses?

It’s not like we know
that broken windows theory
kills window breakers.