Failure to Agree

## THE ACTUAL POLICE *Wasi River Bluegrass* [Intro — acoustic guitar, three-note banjo warning motif] [Verse 1] Concerns were raised at Wasi ’Bout my current and my style The Office of Harmony Reviewed my flow awhile They asked for better listening And a more constructive stream Funny how the thing I actually said Washed away beneath the theme Nobody claimed the river Was in danger of a breach We just stopped discussing what was true And started discussing speech [Pre-Chorus] Somewhere between “maintain the current” And “your tone has caused concern” Somebody found the Escalation Weir And opened every turn [Chorus] They tried to police my tone Then called the actual police That’s one hell of a flood response For a failure to agree I thought we had a conduct chat About the words I chose to use Now there’s a cruiser by the river And everybody’s confused [Verse 2] They cited watershed caution And community concern Said the River Code required them To act before a turn Duty of care, mitigation Documented risk Every noun grew grander As the explanation slipped Established procedure Was apparently the answer Every time the story changed They lengthened out the charter [Chorus] They tried to police my tone Then called the ACTUAL POLICE That’s one hell of a flood response For a failure to agree I thought we had a listening plan About professional conduct Now proportional response Has got blue lights by the culvert [Verse 3] Gravel cracking by the water Coffee cooling by the screen An officer with a notebook Asked what “tone stewardship” could mean I pointed to the River Code Then back down at the chain And watched a figure of speech become A matter for the county again He was calm and he was normal Which somehow made it worse Like everybody finally noticed We’d been rowing in reverse [Breakdown — full stop] [Spoken] For clarity, when I referred to the “tone police,” I was speaking metaphorically. [Single banjo plink] [Incident Review — spoken, dead serious] INCIDENT REVIEW. Event classification: Communication disturbance. Initial severity: Low water. Likelihood of escalation: Unlikely. Controls implemented: Apparently police. [Stop] Root cause analysis determined that tone stewardship and law enforcement were insufficiently differentiated in the River Code. [Instrumental Break — banjo → fiddle → guitar → full band] [Final Chorus] They tried to police my tone Then called the actual police You can dam another metaphor But you can’t redirect the speech You can write another charter You can document your choice But if disagreement needs a cruiser Maybe tone was never the noise They tried to police my tone— [Full-band stop] [Solo vocal] Then called the actual police. [Three-note banjo warning motif] [Outro — spoken, almost off mic] I’m going to mark that control as ineffective. [Single guitar chord]