I was once

a junkie

for true crime TV

I could spot

the guilty

party

in the first

five minutes

The rest of

the hour

was hair-pulling,

handwringing expletives

What I knew

about evil

you wouldn’t

want to

teach

I thought

the clues

were obvious

Anyone could

see them

Couldn’t they?

They were

right there

Out in the open

Couldn’t anyone?

See them?

Unless they

couldn’t

If they were

innocent

I loved Bogart

as Spade or

Marlowe or

any other

hardboiled fall guy,

wrong man,

or hero trying

to solve

the plot to

the mystery

to the crime

of our existence

Sound familiar?

But that is fiction

Not real life

As I sit here

Years later

Trying to piece

Everything together

fragmented flashbacks

to the crime scene

of my near death

experience

The romance

of the gumshoe

isn’t going to

solve this

true

crime

I plod along

in the dark

with the scars

as clues to

the story

Tell the story

That’s why I’m

always three beats

ahead of the

transparent glare

the ploy, the setup,

the trap,

of hair-trigger

street theater,

and predatory stares

I read every

situation

as a

postmortem