Bureaucratic Dictates

“I’m sorry for the inconvenience,”
the Mayor’s rep e-mailed me after I --
at sunset -- crashed into a wire fence
inside a Brooklyn park. Still no reply
years hence. At least they didn’t use tear gas.
Then after filing a police report,
because I walked into an unmarked glass
door and broke my teeth, I gave up my tort
pursuit when I couldn’t get a response
to follow up, as I was told to do.
It was treated with the same nonchalance
as the rape kits police departments threw
into the trash that could have put some creeps
in jail who now are seeds this system reaps.

I wasted 20 minutes of my life
on New York’s instrumental 311
line. For a benign restaurant owner -- rife
with sympathy at my being undone
by tripping in front of his shop -- urged me
to do so. He then asked me if I’d like
a drink. Name, address and a litany
of questions by the city’s rep would strike
at the heart of the matter before I
was told someone would get back to me. No
one did. Well-armed soldiers could not defy
one better with results more apropos.
For in democracies, we aren’t gored
with bayonets, just graciously ignored.