The Great Escape

 

Call yourself a cop

I’ll call myself a robber

Corner me in an outhouse

Call in your backups

Talk to me through bullhorns

“Come out with your hands up

We know you’re in there

Watching flies strafe dust particles

In sunlight shafts

Savoring the odor and the old news

“Come out or we’ll come in after you!”

Tension builds.  No answer.

Anti-climax hero cop makes a perfect photograph

Eyeball peeking through a knot hole

Too late.

I’ve escaped

Down the hole

Into the real world.

From Poems of the New Old West

Copyright 2002 Jack Purcell