George Floyd opens the floodgates, 
      lowers the firewalls, 
                         unwinds the safety valves,
                                       unplugs the tear ducts…
 

How about if... 
the immediate (as in “right away”) arrest of the uniformed killa-cop 
and his three accomplices had happened? 
Their Miranda rights were read, just like on TV? 
That’s all the people were screaming for, a goddamn simple-minded collar.
Just like in the millions of cop-movies we have all seen. 
Just like happens on TV. 
But no! 
The “experts” directing this long-running spectacle 
yet again executed their lame-brained political judgement.
Judgement at its stupidest—or, worse, perhaps most deliberate.
 
If they had?
Then they coulda-shoulda held the robotic killa-cops—all four—for querying. 
Then they couldn’t collaborate their alibis. 
Get the play, you big-time politicians? 
Result: no people flooding the street 
because they felt screwed yet again by your big-time silence. 
And just so you do the obviously right thing, don’t mention two words “Trump” and “Barr”
at your dumb-ass show-off press conference. 
Nobody in the street, except killa-cops, like these two. They say, Shoot!”
Get it, big-time politicians?
 
So now you have plenty of time to charge killa-cop Chauvin with a murder most foul. 
By excessive kneeling, if you must satiate some twisted religion. 
His murder weapon, a reflection of prayer subverted to a deadly genuflection. A sacrilege. 
His knee, body language, compose the mixed-metaphor cliché “smoking-gun.”
His three gotcha-back sidekicks remained transfixed in the face of death. 
Accessories to failure to stop a crime, failure to prevent sin. 
Failure to prevent excessive kneeling on an innocent neck.
 
If they had?
Then no riot. No national guard. 
No Pentagon with politicians’ flags wagging about rescuing American assets. 
No Twin City nuking by a heroic, thanks-a-lot-for-your-service US Army. 
Too bad most people in the street have no assets to rescue, except now, from overly aggressive window shopping.
 
How about if the clown-managers did the intelligent, correct thing?
Alas there would be no opportunity for the 
wind-machine Minnesota governor to play soldier-boy.
In endless yap of military yak about deploying his unprecedented obscene assets etc. 
But never mind, the fix was in, just like in the gangster movies. 
Just like the legal killa-cop wrist-slaps from Klobuchar 
when she was the big, tough, faux state attorney general. 
And there would be no weeping sob-athon from cellar-dweller Biden,
pathetically inaudible, lachrymose Biden. 
 
For this, fellow Americans, is the beginning of the official fascist kingdom. SiegTrump! Heil Pompeo! And we think the Democrats will save us? They, too, covet trillions to “modernize” the vital nuclear arsenal, and allot not a penny for the streets. Just like the village in Vietnam, we will soon be able to destroy Minneapolis, in order to save it, in the very unprecedented, very incredible, very impressive time of 2.34 seconds.
 
The war begins. 
 
And may God continue to bless our remnants. 
 
No more fire, the locusts next time.

Here I am, an old man in a dry month,
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
T.S. Eliot, Gerontium

James Ryan
May 30, 2020
Decoration Day
 
A Bronx-born writer living in Istanbul, Turkey.