Police Game: Participants, Readers, The Death Of My Childhood Friend J. Michael Cook Of Durham, North Carolina, The Gaping Wound In My Left Forearm Poem by Dennis Ryan

Monday morning, May 15, 2023 at 9: 18 a.m. and 11: 26 a.m.

You decided to enter into the police's 'game',
the loss, the coss(t) being my life—its forfeiture,
like the cost, the loss(t) of J. Michael Cook, alive,
vital, riding his bike to work at Duke one day, dead,
dead as a door nail, wooden door the next—use of
advanced, Smart electric/electronic technology that
stops hearts, heartbeats, terminates, this smart technology
"in use" for some 50 years now according to my sources—
the door I would knock on next, month's later, that of
Mike's surviving wife Gail Stillman-Cook, of Woodcroft Village, Durham, North Carolina, following her telephone call to me—
Gail broken down, in tears, sobbing, telling me Mike was
in excellent health at the time of his untimely death, like
that of his son Kevin who died suddenly at twenty-three
years of age—Mike and Gail both good friends since we
we're children in our hometown of Wellsville, New York,
Allegany County, in the Allegheny Mountains where Mike
and I and Brian Cook grew up playing Little League, Babe
Ruth League and American Legion baseball together—that
the cost, the loss of life at police behest, Gail and I sitting
next to each other—along with Prudy Sherman—in home
room senior year in Wellsville Central High School—those where the times! Times now lost—whose want, what? —
those times, friends now lost forever—Rich, Gwen. Finality.
Mike and Gail just boy and girlfriend then—this police 'game' now, you play it without the least concern for me—my left forearm now a mountain of stitches, the gaping wound, cut
wide by the steel floor of a Go Cary bus on the late afternoon
of May 4th when the bus driver failed to lift the floor entry
as I entered the bus, blatant negligence as she saw me
approach the bus from a distance with time to spare,
my life spared by my left arm that protected the left temple
of my head from the semi-circular cut, deep cut to my forearm, after which, a week and a day later, on the night of May 12th, the Cary Police enter a Go Cary bus that I am riding, and proceed to interrogate and harass me for no reason—panic,
they are now desperate, in panic mode. Cowards all—
I call them cowards to their faces, and they have to take it.
The next morning, I am hit by a vehicle in Raleigh, North
Carolina, within sight of the State Fairgrounds, a vehicle
that ran a stop sign as I cross the street, me using my hands
as cushions, bouncing off the car, safe, uninjured. This is
the truth, facts well-told, reiterated here, for you, readers—
for Gail, Brian, Shawn, Devin, Karen, Meredith, Merrideth, Alexa, Amanda, et al., friends, foes alike I choose not to distinguish between at this time, the time all we have left,
all that we have. All live in memory—todo en mi memoria.