Some regard them as contradictory, mutually exclusive; but I say -- what's wrong with a fellow holding down two jobs? Stinging were the taunts of Klopps, an uncomely sawed-off yegg who found the combination richly humorous, and so I was obliged to assist him into a state of horizontal repose where he might usefully reflect upon his artistic prejudices and injuries. The exquisite tranquility of the moment I commemorated in a haiku of somewhat longish measure:
yellow pearls scattered
foolish grin disarrayed
a bitter harvest, swine, your dentist awaits
I've been down some spooky alleys to get here. When things got really tough I wrote to the newspaper lady and gained some sound counsel -- but suicide's for sissies, and that's not my cup of tea, hanging around all day waiting for potential rescuers.
With a despairing cry, I vaulted that guardrail and launched myself off that bridge into a promising career in the automotive industry, but then I had what you might say was a philosophical dispute with some upper-management clowns concerning the precise nature of "nine o'clock sharp," and subsequently one of the little varmints contracted soap poisoning, which is a nasty type of poisoning but also quite amusing; and the other suggested rather testily as I secured him to the "Bug-B-Gone" rotary grille scrubber that perhaps I should direct elsewhere my quest for spiritual fulfilment.
As he vanished into the billowing steam, I pondered his advice, and today, I'm grateful for it. I'm my own boss now, cracking books and punching crooks, not clocks, and I couldn't be happier. As Stefan McCann, Private Investigator and Neo-Synchronistic Poet, I enjoy frequent opportunities to curse, travel unshaven, and behave violently in public; yet I frolic in dewy meadows, planting here a whimsy, plucking there a bloom, like how I get a big lump in my throat when I see a criminal, limned by moonbeams. What's more, it looks much better on my business cards than Steve McCann, the Hot Wax Guy.
The Case of the Unchaste Case
Chapter 1
A lambent Hibachi of a midsummer's night microwave, the kind of sticky sweltering eve that trips the armpit switch and crumples your trenchcoat up like tinfoil on a baked poetato. Poetato, get it? Yeah? Same to you, pal.
I was wrestling with the third draft of a densely-allegorical sonnet, "when her eyes were gunmetal-blue," which, incidentally, is the haunting centrepiece of my first collection of verse, squeezing joy's trigger, available soon in your finer bookstores, assuming I can get near the window display. Ahem:
at that time, then, she was bonny and fair
when her eyes were gunmetal-blue
Pretty good, but somehow it felt . . . incomplete. Now, your typical Elizabethan sonnet has fourteen lines of iambic pentameter arranged in varying but restricted rhyme schemes, such as the e'ergreen ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. What I had was a two-line sonnet with a rhyme scheme of AB, and I wasn't too positive on the iambiiwhatsit jazz. My education was tragically cut short by popular demand.
Sure, I could have left the poem just as it was -- and a lovely poem it would have been -- but what of the innumerable neo-synchronistic poetry consumers out there? Would they be content to linger rapturously over the distilled perfection of my Econosonnet™? No! Whack their snouts with an evocative semi-stanza like that, and they'll want more, more, more! Ordinarily, I'd have no trouble knocking off another dozen lines of fine poetry -- most days, I average 100 A-1 poems, and another 200 or so with minor defects. But tonight, see, I was blocked, and being blocked is like
The manuscript was puddled with sweat, sprinkled with eraser crumbs and doodles. I shoved it aside and into a glass dashed a splash of Old Buzzard; then, seeing as only three-fourths of the fifth remained, I polished that off too.
Maybe . . . hmmm . . . wait! What if . . . ifff . . .
at that time, then, she was bonny and fair
when her eyes were gunmetal-blue
AT THAT TIME, THEN, SHE WAS BONNY AND FAIR
WHEN HER EYES WERE GUNMETAL-BLUE
No obstacle can long delay the mighty bulldozer that is poetic inspiration! Giddy with diesel fumes, with a roaring in my ears, I slammed home the gearshift and lurched into battle -- but at that delicate, pivotal instant, the dumpster's door was savagely flung open, and Fancy's Winged Chariot fell apart like some flimsy toy made of plastic and wire.
Chapter 2
"Dammit, can't you see I'm trying to create in here, and now you've gone and stalled my bulldozer!" Gathering up all my pencils, I hurled them down. "I demand solitude, for only in solitude will the wisp of my Muse wander," I sagely chuckled, thumping the desk with my head for emphasis.
"I . . . I am convulsed with regret," purred a sultry voice. "What an inconsiderate snip of a lass am I, to so recklessly disturb your meditations . . . propelling myself on splendidly-proportioned legs, I shall exit swiftly."
"And quietly!"
THUMP
"Yes, quietly. Perchance you will grant my petty request an indulgent grunt when suits you it best. If --" she sniffled.
"If I live --" she sobbed.
THUMP
"-- that long. Boohoo," she boohooed.
"So good" THUMP "bye already, do I have to draw you a map?"
THUMPTHUMPTHUMP
I felt one of my migraines coming on. I looked up.
She was a tall blonde babe, stacked and with plenty of dignity, just the way I like 'em. And O, neo-synchronistic coincidence -- her eyes were gunmetal-blue!
Chapter 3
Her name was Lola. Instinctively I began considering the rhyming possibilities: Bola, cola, koala, molar, shoulder, bosoms . . . Also, what she would look like with no-clothes-a. It's important to size up the client. The client's bosoms sized up at 40-D, easy.
"I'll bet you'd look good with no-clothes-a," I said, and then I slapped my face, hard, for I had said a sexism, or an Italianism, or both.
Chapter 4
She lit a cigarette and said, "Will you take the case?"
And I said, "What's in it for me?"
Suddenly I realized why she was lugging the huge ceramic pig. She slammed it over my noggin a couple of times and a cool drizzle of spilling silver soothed my ragged nerves as I drifted in and out of consciousness. Then she yanked me up on tiptoe and landed a sizzling kiss with her luscious lips mashed against mine.
Um, not that I'm implying that I have luscious lips, let's get that straight. I have very masculine lips. Right then, true, they had that pouting, bee-stung look, probably in consequence of having a cigarette extinguished on them.
It's considered poor form for a private investigator to show pain. Fortunately, a neo-synchronistic poet is under no such hindrance.
"Ouch," he said. Tears streamed from his eyes. I took the case.
Chapter 5
The trail finally led to an abandoned warehouse out of town. A bad actor name of Xavier Fishrott was holed up inside it like a horrible smell.
When I said this character was a bad actor, I wasn't kidding. He had a special gift that left audiences helpless with laughter, especially when he attempted Shakespeare. Was it the massive contempt of reviewers that soured him on society? Or did the giggles of Hamlet put the bomb in his basket? I don't know. I don't worry too much about the psychology of these punks. I just shut them down.
I figured to lull him with gentle flattery: "Curtain call, Fishrott! Come out and take a bow!" He responded with a sneer:
"Youse dirty gumshoe, youse the one wot finked my scag!"
Not to mention the sickening belch of a burp gun. And that's something that gets me gnawing on the Valium bottle. Let's face it, boys and girls, there's nothing uglier than truly inept Cagneyisms.
Chapter 6
I kicked down that door and went in there, chanting a bantering canto:
steel verbs be my sword
& bronze nouns my shield
thick is my armor
a coconut, unpeel'd
rhyme be my doublet
& rhythm my buckler
so come out with your hands up
you stupid motherf --
I was interrupted by heckling of the worst sort, mechanized. A burst of criticism smashed into me, ripping off my left arm.
"Hey, you jerk, I was speaking metaphorically!"
"I detest metaphor and all manner of florid imagery! You sound like one of those soppy Romantics! Wordsworth -- bah!
Two problems confronted me. The first was that I had to concede that Fishrott's textual analysis was not entirely without merit; though I would argue, only in a narrow, formally aesthetic sense. In brevity's interest, I will decline to offer here an extensive rebuttal, incorporating, say, the sturdy tenets of "catachrestopathomania" theory, as enunciated by Grimshaw, et. al.¹
Suffice it to note that, certainly, metaphor can be abused; but in moderation, it often adds that prized "extra bit of oomph"² that amplifies the poem's internal dynamic, speeds it along its impish arc -- makes it "stick," a spitball on the blackboard of the reader's mind. Of course, I was secretly thrilled by the comparison to Wordsworth.
The second problem was that I was wearing a bow tie, and a clip-on at that; but I eventually converted it into a jaunty tourniquet, and then I went to retrieve my pistol, which I had forgotten -- again! -- at the pawn shop. One of these days I'm going to get a holster for it, too, and then watch out. While I was there, I accidentally phoned the police, who were gracious enough to go over and arrest Fishrott, sparing me another gruelling bus ride.
Chapter 7
i've said it before
i'll say it again
on crime I wage war
with fist and with pen
"I even autographed it for him, but the judge threw the book at me. Said I was out of order, he didn't have $24.95 on him, and he didn't like poetry anyway. Then he threw the book at Fishrott. Cruel and unusual punishment, but so what?"
"I only wish the sentence had been even more severe, utterly crushing the verminous miscreant under the terrible wheel that is Justice," cooed Lola. "An infinity dodging crusty rolls in Sam Beckett's Dine 'N' Drama isn't enough."
I swept her into my arm. "You and me, toots, we could make beautiful neo-synchronistic poetry together. There's just one thing I ask."
"Anything. Anything for you, 'Stinky.'"
"Ditch the cigarette this time, huh?"
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¹ T. Grimshaw and D. Buckblatt, The Poet As Loose Cannon -- A Syncretic Methodology (New York: Norton, 1978), pp. 810-96
² R. Gawdley Ffinch, The Dummies Guide To Small Bulldozer Repair (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999, p. 13