Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Chief Justice Shakespeare

Ladies and Gentlemen, via ATL, your Chief Justice of the Supreme Court:
North Philly, May 4, 2001. Officer Sean Devlin, Narcotics Strike Force, was working the morning shift. Undercover surveillance. The neighborhood? Tough as a three­ dollar steak. Devlin knew. Five years on the beat, nine months with the Strike Force. He’d made fifteen, twenty drug busts in the neighborhood.

Devlin spotted him: a lone man on the corner. Another approached. Quick exchange of words. Cash handed over; small objects handed back. Each man then quickly on his own way. Devlin knew the guy wasn’t buying bus tokens. He radioed a description and Officer Stein picked up the buyer. Sure enough: three bags of crack in the guy’s pocket. Head downtown and book him. Just another day at the office.
If Chief Justice Roberts can pass off a Raymond Chandler novel as a dissenting opinion, then why can't my moot court brief be a limerick? Look:

There once was a man from Belfoom
who sold illegal DVDs from his room.
He let in an informant
Now the Fourth Amendment is dormant
so to jail where he'll meet his doom.

I expect my Pulitzer for Literature any day now.

2 comments:

Mr. Cooper said...

You can't begin and end a limerick with the same word. And I like how you've equated Shakespeare with Raymond Chandler.

I demand this entire post be taken down.

Charlie said...

You absolutely can begin and end a limerick with the same word. Edward Lear, who popularized limericks, did it aaaaaall the time.

See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lear

and

http://www.poetry-online.org/limericks.htm

I demand this entire comment be taken down.

ps. In any case, the same words version was the first draft.