What You Can Get Away With

What you can get away with
in here is

at least three murders a day
depending on your
choice of food and 
drink and how much
electricity you use and
where you drive and how far
and for what purpose

What you can get away with
in here is 
tossing out a storm cloud
of sharp words for fun
as we used to do
with good old
lawn darts
(c’mon, you never met
a soul damaged by lawn darts
after all
must be one of those 
legends the weak tell
to shut the strong up)
and then laughing 
when they penetrate
someone’s head

What you can get away with 
in here is

cartoons on sports jerseys
and high school recreations of 
important-to-the-infrastructure
massacres by bullet
by oil and steel and a hundred
paper cuts from lethal treaties

What you can get away with 
in here is

blinkered messaging and 
whistling for hunting dogs
for some moonlight or daylight scramble
after prey you don’t even know but
once you corner them you can decide
you know enough
to pour blood out on the soil
(not to spill it
it’s no accident) 

What you can get away with 
in here is

blindly misunderstanding
who lets you get away
with all this and why
it serves them to have you
become what you are

and remain here laughing 
and tossing and shooting and 
buying and selling and 
what’s a little blood anyway