TODD MERCER

Too Late to Break the Law

Now is not a time to enter into a life of crime

and expect to get away without being observed at it,

caught and then identified, socially red-lettered,

tossed unceremoniously into the local suspects pool.

Look up. See the observers. Oh so many cameras

on buildings, at intersections. Seen and unseen

eyes in the sky. Zoom lenses on satellites.

The sky’s so thick with buzzing drones

they need air traffic control, they need lanes

up there. So forget the theft capers, quit longing

for short cuts to that easy money. Absolutely not

a chance of offing someone, without losing

years and years in time out at a state

or federal joint. Just don’t. In a bygone golden era

for crime-o-philes and cat burglars,

there was work for stick-up artists,

and take your pick on cons that used to fly

beneath the radar. Nice, but that was long ago.

Because they catch you now. They do. It’s simple

for them, given their tools. They catch you once

then watch you always with a side-eye.

They’ll come by with twenty questions

whenever they have cases to clear.

Crime was once a decent-paying field.

It paid the basic household bills. And I

can half-way follow the allure. But no;

there’s always someone watching. Crime

is gone as a field of work, and so we let it go.

Todd Mercer’s short collection, Ingenue, was a winner of the Celery City contest. His digital chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance is available at Right Hand Pointing. Recent work appears in Literary Yard, MacQueen’s Quinterly and Michigan Bards Poetry Anthology.

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