White Devils!

Do you know who I am? Seriously, I live here. I own this peace, bitch. This is my house. That I own. And yet you're here, arresting me.

This is Cambridge, not Boston. We got MIT, Harvard, The Coop, T.T. The Bears, hell we got more used bookstores than anywhere in the world. I can understand being a racist cop over in Boston. I can see it -- growing in Southie, hating the blacks living just below you in Roxbury, joining the force to help channel your building rage, beat up a few innocent black teenagers so you won't hit the wife -- I get it. But, bitches, we're on the other side of the Charles River! Cambridge cops eat falafel. They donate to NPR. Cambridge cops write poetry.

I bet this shit doesn't happen to other 'rock star' professors teaching over here in the greater Boston area. I mean, you don't hear that Elie Wiesel got pinched for shoplifting. Noam Chomsky isn't pulled over for a 'broken tail light' and beaten about the face and neck with a club. Spike Lee isn't... well, he's a bad example. He's probably takes an exorbitant amount of shit from the cops. Hell, I've even slapped that tiny bitch outside the JFK school of government for torturing me with "Girl 6", but that's not the point.

But just look at me. I teach at Harvard. University. I ain't no shitbird associate professor teaching those cro-mag hockey-scholarships at Boston College or Northeastern. Bitch, I teach in the big leagues. It don't get more crunk than Harvard. And I got cred. I was listed in Time magazine's "25 most influential people" in 1997. (Though Don Imus was listed as well.) I do not break into people's houses, let alone mine.

But you, a Cambridge cop, saw me and thought -- here's a mid-50s professorial-type with a polo shirt and tiny glasses and he is forcing a door down so he can get inside, steal everything in sight... so he can buy crack and the latest Doris Kearns Goodwin treatise on Lincoln. Shit, beatch, get transferred to over to the Boston police, where you belong, you racist pig.

Now where's my phone call? You know I'm callin' Obama, cracker! Your ass is gonna be transferred to Mattapan.

Tears of a Clown

How could this happen to me? To ME?

Here I am, tears welling up in my eyes, arrested... and for what? How did I get here?

Well, my neatly shaved head might give the impression that I'm a military man. But the five days of beard growth on my chin suggests that I'm never far from a cold beer and a Camel Light and perhaps some WWE. Sure, I look a little sketchy and am definitely not a dude you want to be trapped in an elevator with, but c'mon, give a guy a break.

How was I supposed to know that whore was an undercover cop. She had all the trappings of a lady of the night: frosted, pink lips; a powerful rack; six inch clear heels; a thin veneer of desperation. I was drawn to her...something about the way she smacked her cheap gum and looked me up and down with her powder-blue lidded eyed. At no point did I think -- "Hey, let's ask her if she's a cop. I know it's not really entrapment if she says no, but it can't hurt, right?" No, I went for it. "How much to get a nob job? I know where an ATM is right around the corner." Oh, her salty disposition turned right then and there. A smile crossed her lips, she spat out her flavor deprived gum, and smacked those handcuffs on me; done with such glee and merriment, as if she couldn't wait to scream those terrible words: "You're under arrest."

Now how did I get here? I had such promise at one point in my life. A top learner at my parochial school, I was told by the nuns that I could do anything with my life, just as long as I applied myself and stopped masturbating. I had two good, loving parents, an older brother acting as a guide and a sage as to how to negotiate the road of life, and healthy head of hair: I should have had it all. And yet I find myself weeping like a girl, as they snap my arrest photo.

Perhaps it's society to blame. If, along that road of life, there hadn't been all of those distractions, I might have yielded myself a doctor, a lawyer, a statesmen. Instead, I am meager box monkey, toiling in the bowels of a UPS shipping center. And what about those distractions -- was it I who make the sip of wine so available? Or pumped broadband internet into my studio apartment so that all flavors of pornography could be viewed? And that devil weed...oh how she tempts me.

This is truly why I cry. Not for the impending day that I will stand in judgment, and the requisite community service. No, I fear not the Saturday I will spend on the side of the highway, picking up litter, enduring the honks and catcalls of my social betters as they speed by in their autos, but I do weep for the road that has been traveled by me. I am truly lost.

Now, who's got a smoke?

Why arrest me?

I am angry...an angry man. My freedom was taken from me...and for what? Could be it my unruly hair? Be that a crime? These wispy tendrils growing out of my head cannot be tamed...like my love of Grindcore... or my need to collect glass pipes in a drawer... or my tempestuous relationship with the films of Hal Hartley.

Or was it my lack of a complete set of teeth? When did it become a crime to have one of your teeth rot out of your head? So I chose not to replace it. What if I was a hockey player and after receiving a powerful cross-check, my tooth was released from its perch in my gum line. Maybe, when I went on sabbatical from my job at the gun rage (where I sweep up exhausted shells) I lost my insurance and Cobra didn't cover my dental needs, so I was forced to let nature take its ugly, cruel course. Find me the crime in that! I dare you!

And so I scream; for the injustice that has been done to me. Yes, I was arrested. And yes, they fingerprinted me and took my booking photo. And yes, when the civil servant working at the police dispatching center told me they were going to snap my picture, a powerful roar erupted from within me. Imagine Roger Daltrey hitting that primordial scream at the apex of "Won't Get Fooled Again" and mix it with the sound a child makes when he accidentally steps on an exposed nail, running on a porch in Cape Cod while on vacation with his family, ruining their summer fun with a trip to the hospital and a dreaded 'tetanus' shot. My word, I hated those summer on the Cape.

Let my call not go unheard.

As they wiped the spittle from my lip, rapped my temple with a club, and took their rubber gloved hands to my torso, forcing me into a dank, miserable holding cell, the words of Dylan Thomas echoed throughout my methamphetamine and Coors Light riddled brain:

"Do not go gentle into that good night,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light."


Rage, indeed!