CRIME AND NO PUNISHMENT

Waiting for a bus that never comes,

I finger the numbers tattooed on my arm,

haunted by the brutality of the Kapos

at Buchenwald.

My heart still beats, even though

my soul has run out of bread and water.

Unshackled, hoods roam the streets

of Oakland, eyeballing my iPhone.

There’s no hint of tenderness in the air

Recently, the security guard

in my parking garage was shot to death

for the few bucks in his wallet.

Everyone at work feels we might as well

be living in Bagdad with suicide bombers.

The poor no longer call it stealing.

Like young Mel Brooks, shoplifting

at Woolworth, they call it “taking”.

Life is hard, even for the executive

with his attaché case, who, like a soldier

marching to Pretoria, leaves his wife at home

sipping wine on endless empty afternoons.

Imprisoned in a cloistered cubby,

there’s so much I don’t understand.

I study the “The Guide For the perplexed”

when no one’s looking, and conclude:

ES IZ SHVER ZU SEIN A YID.