Offence

Offence

He had the entire psychic make up

And a fitting physique

That made him look like ghoul but unique.

A few times he had been jailed.

And, rightly so, he believed that he had made himself failed

But he was a daredevil and not a quitter.

As expected he decided to turn things round

And hatched a plan

This time on the other side of the legal fence to land.

Thus he joined law enforcement unit as a special elite squad.

He was a pugnacious, minatory, head-bashing bigot

Unrivalled and unbridled,

He roamed abandoned mid-night streets

Under legal cover

Only to disrobe when situation turn in his favour

To break in to peoples abodes

And robbed them at gunpoint to their heads.

In broad daylight he hurtled diatribes

At people he regarded as from racially inferior tribes.

Not finding his easy picking victims,

He terrorised women of his own race,

While going round doing their own business.

Them too, men of his kind, did not escape his wrath

If by accident they happened to cross his way

They would get punches till their world swayed.

Despite the dark side of his career

In his new occupation he became a well known and

Acclaimed hero.

He had acted, many times than one, with valour

And as a reward he had scaled the ladder

As a corporal colonel.

In this new project and the role he played,

Together with his elite squad comrades,

Made him feel his time as a lone vagabond

Was a real precious time squandered.

He regretted that he had not joined the state

When he could have had assisted, nurtured and bolstered

Its apparatus right from the start.

He beat, tortured and harassed

Ethnic groups he detested most.

With a legal license as cover

And tacit approval of his fellow soldiers,

He raped women behind closed bars,

To the victims’ horror

This time round for longer hours

And to the requirement of his deviant sexual desires

With no fear whatsoever

But one day while he was buggering

A handcuffed young woman

Whose identity and crime was not yet clearly known,

He suffered a heart attack

Disgorged balls of coagulated blood

And on top of her crouched back

He fell over frozen dead,

With his trousers down.

Surprise! Surprise! What did they come up with?

When they broke the news?

While he was carrying out his duty,

The revered police chief received an a fatal blow

From a suspected criminal known to be mean down low.

That made the arraigned woman look-like doubly guilty.

Copyright Haileselassie Girmay

12/12/98