Norton Hodges
I Am The Law
Beware the policeman who creeps in the night,
As cunning as Croesus, as swift as a sprite,
He grasps a great lamp and a bicycle chain,
He grins like a gremlin, he laughs like a drain,
His prominent biceps are manly and firm,
He crushes the beetle and throttles the worm,
He lopes like a jackal o’er mountains and hills,
He pole vaults through gardens and leaps between sills.
That face at the window you thought was a dream,
That nicotine smile with its sickening gleam,
That skeletal, luminous, cobwebby mask
Was none but the PC performing his task,
Protecting your nightmares, policing your tears,
Recording in notebooks the facts of your fears,
His feet in your gutter, his head at your pain,
He whistles so softly it could be the rain,
And once having noted with earnestness deep
The lies that you tell when you talk in your sleep,
He slopes off in sly boots as quiet as the moss
To a bright all night café to brief the Big Boss.
Beware the policeman patrolling his beat,
At the dead of the night he may lurk in your street,
He may loom at the casement, the mouth of the cave,
That starts at your synapse and ends in your grave.
As cunning as Croesus, as swift as a sprite,
He grasps a great lamp and a bicycle chain,
He grins like a gremlin, he laughs like a drain,
His prominent biceps are manly and firm,
He crushes the beetle and throttles the worm,
He lopes like a jackal o’er mountains and hills,
He pole vaults through gardens and leaps between sills.
That face at the window you thought was a dream,
That nicotine smile with its sickening gleam,
That skeletal, luminous, cobwebby mask
Was none but the PC performing his task,
Protecting your nightmares, policing your tears,
Recording in notebooks the facts of your fears,
His feet in your gutter, his head at your pain,
He whistles so softly it could be the rain,
And once having noted with earnestness deep
The lies that you tell when you talk in your sleep,
He slopes off in sly boots as quiet as the moss
To a bright all night café to brief the Big Boss.
Beware the policeman patrolling his beat,
At the dead of the night he may lurk in your street,
He may loom at the casement, the mouth of the cave,
That starts at your synapse and ends in your grave.
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