When the judge in a courtroom drama asks the defendant to
rise…I get up from the couch. This is what happens from taking on the world.
There is much to account for. Historians may well ask where were you, Citizen
Levine, when your country napalamed Viet Nam, overthrew Allende, invaded Iraq
and tortured prisoners.
It’s bad enough that I swiped a deposit bottle from the
back shed of a candy store when I was twelve and then brought it in the front
door for the 2 cents. I also re-used an un-cancelled stamp once or twice and
sneaked into a second movie at a multiplex. It’s been a life of crime, I admit.
For those of us with a conscience even these misdemeanors
weigh heavily and grow exponentially in the fecund soil of the unconscious. In
my dreams I most often find myself in the shoes of an escaped felon even if I
forgot what it is that I did. I’m tired of being the international drug lord,
serial killer and embezzler. I’m ready to turn myself in and confess to every
unsolved case on the police blotter.
This could be my shadow-self. That guy who has been
following me behind the newspaper on the subway, that goon holding up the
lamppost across the street at midnight. I could be that double-agent urban
guerrilla who forgot his assignment.
May I approach the bench, your honor? I ask that the jury
disregard these previous remarks. My client is given to delusions of depravity.
If he fell asleep in Star Wars-3 and woke up in Star Wars-5 it was
unintentional. As for his alleged crime at age twelve the records will show
that he never was twelve. He skipped from age eleven to thirteen. Further forensics
will reveal that it wasn’t his DNA on those un-cancelled stamps. The defense
rests.
The prosecution asks the jury to consider the accused acts
of omission as well. In his near 83 years this country has gone off course and
he did nothing to stop the skid. When we recklessly allied ourselves with
corrupt scoundrels Mr. Levine merely whimpered in protest. Where was he when we
kicked the hornet’s nest in the Middle East, engineered coups, occupied
sovereign states, assassinated with drones and violated the Geneva Convention?
The chronicle of History will show he tacitly endorsed these nefarious acts by
his vigorous inaction.
We, the jury, find the defendant shall be sentenced to
another year of guilt-ridden dreams. He shall be haunted by every cardboard box
at the off-ramp, be made to feel the sting of para-military police rage and the
toxic tongue of dangerous fools.
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