Monday, November 6, 2017

"Why I was dismissed from jury duty"



The accused

sat alone in a glass dock,and couldn't quell the Love in his head!
  Female Crown, in long sleek gown, hair black at roots but thinning
for the most part, said smugly to me
 "Do you uphold the law for fear
only that more like me won't sit content (at least six) in a jury box,
  I mean six females like me?"

"In love", I said," and not knowing how to stop, I think he took her—
  Yes, and is wrongly accused"

"He swept her off a mean street--you mean!- in an unlawful way,"
  she said, baring the look of Law

"And for that he sits there, and eyes every juror that passes by"
  I said, "the soft-browed & steely-eyed".

"And were there perhaps a male more, you'd say he'd sit less alone,"
  she replied,more inclined to jeer
"and he is led now  by sugary-voiced Counsel who, with a raised digit,
  motions him 'up' or 'down'— ha!"

"I say she was a pretty girl, with chestnut eyes, a cute pug nose,
   and puffy lips", I added;
"you'd have approved of it or not, pulled into the same long roads
  Or perhaps the stars have,
duly overlooked, been mostly to blame for the legal mess he's in
  In a tight blouse buttoned tight
braless, too, I believe she'd walked alone into the moon that night"

  But she snapped,"You see differently
or he wouldn't have taken her:she who'd wailed at him, that night
  wails now in this place, for me"

"No, she came to him, half-coyly, half-shyly, desirable on silettos,
  offering a mouth, nose—a bliss!—"

"And at about this time and at this place,the stars oversaw a rape—"
  she retorted, visibly red 

  "No, her hair fell in ringlets, down her face"

"And she who didn't consent, scraping the ground,saying 'Please stop!'
   felt the same June heat as he,
excited but angry, almost sweating trying to run in heels from him—"

  "No, if he'd been the beast,
 as per her story and yours, he'd never had had a brush with hair, eyes"

  And as she'd never run from anyone,
herself too strained, maternal, the female Crown dismissed another juror,
  and after that, another


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