My Blackmail Note to All of You

I bought one for 45 bucks, a plain, planar lens,
but with a tattletale opening on the side of the lens tube,
and inside a privacy-piercing mirror placed at the proper right
angle
to reflect all you oblivious peripheral subjects straight into my
sharp focus.
Sometimes my camera points at garbage cans for it isn’t beauty I
seek,
but your faux pas beauts committed when you think no one is
looking.
With my make-believe-forward-facing lens all your venial
embarrassments center in my vision.
I’m the candid camera of public parks unabashedly pointing my
peeping Tom lens at all of you—
nose pickers, crotch scratchers, earwax scoopers, bellybutton lint
pickers, navel ponderers,
bra adjusters, food dribblers, sweaty underarm raisers, and
egregious expectorating phlegm throwers.
I also frame what holy zealots regard as mortal sins,
lovers unzipping flies—girl and boy of course,
but also male and male for a double uncoupling of zippered teeth.
And even clearer naked truths are uncovered by my tabloid lens,
bearded Moslems eyeing Orthodox Jewish girls draped in long
denim skirts,
and Chassids eyeing every blond shiksa passing by.
(Mortal sin or not, maybe, just maybe hush-hush hankering might
someday bring Holy Land peace.)
A menagerie of piggish improprieties of the purportedly priggish
played out at the perimeter of my perception all fall perpendicular
to my presumed but pseudoline of sight and are then pivoted
precisely to my picture-taking peepers.
Listen, I’ve got all your gotcha moments ensconced on my
memory card,
perturbing pixels primed for planetary propagation via a grand
upload to the worldwide web.

Of course extortion is prohibited, but it’s permissible,
constitutionally protected to photograph
people’s private peccadillos performed in public places,
and I’m not asking for even a penny from anyone.
No, I’m asking for so much more from everyone.