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“Perhaps I disappoint you
when I admit a storm growls
in my most private pit of my stomach.
Well it does – the storm I mean –
stirring a storm. After those months
of classroom safety, well, here I am,
first call, and can’t help wonder
about the real existence
of tangible evidence when we
enter into that place. Shall I look
without one wince or flinch if
I must place my gaze on one
who has committed a trespass
oh so utterly foul? Please pray I not choke
in that time. True, in our training
we trained as though we did not train
but did handle true blue items
of incrimination strung to acts
that the ordinary citizenry,
those we know as the good people,
should never be forced to know of
in detail – yet now to see this is all
very real and there may be
actual substances these hands shall touch
and to imagine it possible
these nostrils may suffer so,
well, I guess I hope the report
turns out to be an innocent mistake
on behalf of the informant,
especially one alerting us
from anonymity. Yet I know
I cannot escape experiences.”
So a lieutenant who more or less
babbled inquired of the major
at the wheel and who had served in
Salvation Squad long enough to forget
what it was like to be a sapling
and green as April or May
on a neighborhood beat keeping all ears
and eyes open for signs of a fool
committing an immoral deed.
For this babbling newbie
Salvation Squad lieutenant
wasn’t just any babbling newbie
Salvation Squad lieutenant.
This particular Salvation Squad
lieutenant was a sprout freshly
pushed fluffy but not too fluffy
because to be too fluffy was a sign
one entertained the darkest
of all emblems and levels
agreed across the board as born
from the oldest agents of darkness
– anyway, this fresh and safely
fluffy lieutenant of late
a graduate from the mightiest
academy – its might no
coincidence for its motors
were minds of men who seldom
laughed or even let themselves chuckle;
meaning they meant serious
business though not so much
business as in selling products
and hoping to bring customers
an innocent moment of happiness;
no, this academy’s stout foundation
and stalwart walls rose in stony
erections for the sake of training up
a moral core on the order
of an army numbered with ranks
made numb to echelon analysis;
able and eager to squelch flesh
philosophies that long ago
corrupted golden traditions,
but at last (or alas for they
who assumed they could continue
to do as their ancestors did)
the mystical pendulum swung
from that which for so long was to that
which for a dark and humor-free age
had to be. All pleasures had to come
under microscopic scrutiny.
Forming bureaucratic agencies
numerous enough to fill a fat
metropolitan telephone book
was the ultimate dream solution,
but such a formation magnitude
was beholden to pragmatism
that said they may as well settle in
for a slow stroll across Nebraska.
