"The Events Leading Up to the Collapse of Detective Dulllight"

From Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse

By Of Montreal

There was jello in the fingerprints Detective Dulllight discovered. This proved to be the most important finding in the case. And whereas Detectives Slocks and Slovits slobbered over smutty photographs, Dulllight had a better lead to follow.

He followed the ringing to the telephone where a voice asked,
♫ "Excuse me aren't you so and so?
Oh so and so, since you left I
have been eating only sweets cause
they remind me of you." ♫

He felt this surely was a clue. So he climbed into the tub wearing his underwear and overcoat, jumped aboard the model boat and followed the water down the drain.

In his brain there are file cabinets and secretaries filing their nails downstairs...

"But I don't want to talk about that room downstairs!"

At this moment Detective Slocks and Slovets realize that since they had reported on the crime scene this morning each of them has aged over fifty years. Two butterflies land on their shoulders and harmonize softly in their ears,
♫ "Where did all the time go?
Did you think that you'd stay young forever?
But at least you're still together..." ♫

They held hands in the moonlight. The butterflies flew away which prompted Slovit's to say,
"It's queer, but I miss them already."

Slocks removed a fountain pen from his breast pocket, drove it deep into Slovit's throat and began screeching,
"DEATH TO THE PARCHMENT WHALE, THE ROBOT IAM LASAILE."

While in prison, Slocks wrote one of the most revered exercises in free verse titled "The Cause of Gauze."

Oh the cause of gauze,
The Manuels have fondled many memories from my lap
though each memory has its own lap
and swimmers swim laps.
Even swimmers have laps, however;
and while in that condition many require a delicate gauze.
I desire only this in my decrepitude -
that I will have one more opportunity
to serve as a gauze to my fellow man
and that in that state of gauze
can somehow disturb the world less often with my prickly fingers.

When Detective Dulllight returning from the catacombs first heard the news of the Slocks and Slovets stabbing and subsequent poetry enterprise he immediately fell to the floor and began plucking peaches from his cheeks.

This eventually became a tiresome activity so he evaporated into the cream a float a child's bedtime coco.

Kat Bourek

Communication Design & Classics
Washington University in St. Louis
kbourek@wustl.edu | (314) 935-5000