The Angry Exile: Illegal in Virginia: possession of a penis?

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Monday 21 December 2009

Illegal in Virginia: possession of a penis?

Remember the guy who was arrested for being naked inside his own home? Well, astonishingly he's been found guilty.

Erick Williamson, 29, continues to believe that he has done nothing wrong and that he did not purposely expose himself to two women and a seven-year-old boy who had walked past his house on the morning of October 19.

He immediately appealed against his conviction.

I know this is a long way away in a country that I have no link to and in a state which I've never even visited, but it just pisses me off that a nation that talks so much about freedom can cheerfully tell one of its own people that he is not free to walk around naked in the privacy of his own home in case someone is nosey enough to look through his windows from the street and fragile enough to take exception to a glimpse of his knob.

As for this:

Williamson denied standing naked in his doorway or front window and said he had no intent to expose himself to anyone.

But Judge O'Flaherty likened Williamson to bank robber John Dillinger, who also "thought he was doing nothing wrong when he walked into banks and shot them up".

Welcome to Earth, Judge O'Flaherty. Does being naked in your own home even bear any comparison with robbing a bank? Look, here's what happens when a bank is robbed: someone use violence or the threat of violence to force people to hand over money against their will and which belongs neither to them or the robber. Got that? Right. Now here's what happens when you wonder around naked in your otherwise unoccupied home: . See? In itself it does absolutely nothing, and in fact requires what some would argue is an invasion of privacy in order to be seen by someone else. Personally I wouldn't go that far since he clearly was seen and if he didn't want that to happen he shouldn't have gone near any windows. But surely the reverse of that also applies. Surely people who do not want to see a naked man (or woman for that matter - I'm sure some idiot somewhere would get just as incensed at the sight of a pair of breasts or a 'Tassie map' in similar circumstances) inside his own house they shouldn't be looking at the fucking windows in the first place.

2 comments:

JuliaM said...: "...in case someone is nosey enough to look through his windows from the street..."

Unusually, we're one up on the Yanks, in that we've let technology do the hard work for us...; 21 December 2009 at 23:07
Angry Exile said...: Yeah, saw that over at AlJ's earlier. What do you suppose they were looking at? Nosey bastards. Still, the reverse applies and if you know there's a camera out there and were bothered by it you'd probably draw the curtains.; 23 December 2009 at 04:52