the cop in your head

when upon making your way through the grocery store
you noticed a wo/man sliding a loaf of bread or a bottle of water,
some food stuff, under their coat, and
making their way past the register to the door,
without paying &
inside, the loud bell
chimes---
all that you learned during your conditioning
through schooling to be a good citizen,
through church to get your gold stars in “heaven,”
through gaining adultship amidst the rest of
the ba ba ba sheep in the
kingdom of empire,
has isolated in you one idea that if you don’t shout to
someone in charge,
that person is gonna get away with something that
you have not---
there is no thought in your head that
someone who steals food may be in dire straits that
you yourself have never had to consider
(and that may never matter anyway, because the
“law” trumps all---right?) &
there is no thought in your head that the mental capacity to
steal something of substance in need
might reveal a deficiency, be it mental or otherwise,
which might not even be satisfied in such a manner,
or that the whole event reveals so much more about the
warped context of society as a whole
(where one without such substance has to steal it to begin with)---
no,
the cop in your head
(which tells you that if you don’t scream “thief!” in order to get this person
the ultimate consequence for their actions, then your whole little world will crumble away) dominates,
the cop in your head wins out &
in letting it,
you sound the alarm to the person in charge
like a good little boy/girl &
this person, whose life was already worse than yours to begin with,
gets thrown into the garbage, once again &
you go on about your day
thinking that you have done a great deed,
thinking that you & you alone have saved the precious moral fabric of the world in which you live &
that because said person is going to
“get theirs,”
that you have saved it all from happening again.