Jurisprudence
Across the cracked concrete slabs,
past a fallen dogwoods left lying like so much litter;
at the red brick base of the courthouse, the jurors strode.
Through the doors too heavy for a mere woman to open unassisted;
and their constant societal reminder of place, of strength and weakness;
doors serving as the first purposeful, architectural devise of disrespect;
up to the toy soldiers of the city and the arched metal catcher gate,
the jurors of democracy strode.
Patted down and prodded, stripped of individuality,
so like the cattle, they assume we are like the criminals, who we are told are..
“Presumed innocent until proven guilty.”
We too are subjected to the indignities of the law.
The jurors moved.
Herded up, rickety elevators into the bowels of the ivory towers of jurist prudence,
funneled in alphabetical order to weary clerks, who sticker, stamp and quantify us,
Innumerable names to numerous lists.
The jurors wait.
The sheer nature of the building, the room, its officials, cowed the crowd
who sat cud chewing and bottom scratching; awaiting the arrival of the Judge?
I sat, longing for the days of Jefferson, the rebirth of the Renaissance man;
wrestling with the morality of ignorant justice?
Wondering what poor, smuck was to be brought before this modern day
Madame Defarge’s who sat knitting.
In this place of punishment, power and perversity;
the sacrificial lambs of democracy wallowed.
The hollowness of the hall, mirrored the hollowness of the statement,
“A jury of PEERS?”
How on earth in this nation “Under God?”
Could anyone think this uneducated, and undereducated, mass of
Unemployed or underemployed, aged humanity,
should, could or would, be able to rightly determine anyone’s fate?
What farce, this democratic process this capitalistic rigmarole;
which served to do little more than place another Mc’D burger,
on the table of a fat civil servant.
This system of blind, weighted, judgment, which assured anything BUT justice.
Which assured, as it always has, and always will; only that peons remained peons.
Busily buzzing about their self-important tasks paid, unpaid and pissed on,
aiding the true criminals, the ones; perpetuating poverty, homelessness,
illness, and ignorance; in remaining in power.
The Jury was called.
The clocked marked the passing of the hour with black hands on a white face
and all that was truly seen was gray.
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