There Was An Old Lady Poem by George Witte

Remember that shopkeeper witnesses named,
passports and cellphones apparently stolen?
He looked like he'd swallowed a fly when informed
Geneva procedure might hurt just a little.
The thing about spiders: you wriggle and jiggle
until they come crawling with pretext for action,
table your issue for further consumption
and leave you encrypted, gibberish data
in parallel networks no bird can divine
or destroy, even with cadenced munitions.
Night vision goggles unclouded by doubt
the cat surveils persons of marginal interest
suspected of nothing but arming the system.
The old lady's fallen and dialed nine one one.
Her pit bull roams howling while villagers march,
sickles and pitchforks aloft in the torchlight,
milk cow and carthorse conscripted for meat.
That shopkeeper's next if he doesn't confess.


From Deniability (Orchises Press,2009)