The Street Lawyer

I fancy myself a lawyer in the streets

Hereinafter referred to as Street Lawyer

Dressed not in crisp dark suits but ordinary street wear

Carrying not wheeled suitcases but newspapers and legal journals

Seated not in posh law firms but Aga Khan Walk and Job Corner

I am a Street Lawyer.

You will not find me in Conference Halls

Or Seminars

Chatting about Thomas Hobbes

I am a Street Lawyer.

You will find me in Studios

Canvassing on Hague and Rome Statute

Giving a legal angle to every current news on Telly

People think I am a mad man

Walking with torn pieces of Law Reports

People mistake me for a lunatic

Reciting maxims and Latin and sections

That makes me no less

A  Street Lawyer.

I am the law in motion

Not static in phlegmatic law handlers

I make law rotate and spin around mouths of men

People love me because I am their bridge, their Moses

I read sections of the constitution

And explain them as if it is a Class- Two- Baa- Baa- Black- Sheep- Rhyme

But I am friend to Tear Gas Canisters

For I also speak the Human Rights Language fluently

Thrice I have been poisoned, twice shot, dozen-times jailed

On trumped-up charges

For I am a Street Lawyer.

I speak straight and narrow

Even against the highest in the echelons of power

If I see travesty of justice, I cry murder

If I see sloth of the Legislature, I harangue

If I see the police killing aimlessly, I climb Street Lamps in protest

If I see Press gagged, I walk with them with mouth sealed

If I see my country steeped in impunity, I go on hunger strike

For I am a Street Lawyer

I speak the language of the common man.

C) Lorot Salem 2011