Why is it
That nobody has ever suspected
Foul ‘play’
When it comes to the death of
G.K. Chesterton?

He died younger than you’d expect
He died richer than he’d expect
(He never paid attention to numbers or matters like that)

Yet nobody suspects
Anything
About the death
Of this writer
Who spoke
Vigorously against suicide
Who spoke
Poetically about the gift of life
And who was
Noticeably, remarkably, steadfastly
Devoted to his wife

Personally,
I suspect
Foul play

Turning to another case
(I’ll return to this one)

It is written
(Ha! Here I’ve used a phrase oft-used by Jesus
Who seems not to have enjoyed quoting the number of the verse
Not a Protestant, see)
that Judas
was
the Keeper of the Purse —
“Administrator”
he

Indeed

It is written
(that phrase again)
Judas was the type
Who’d rather
Calculate
The cost of the perfume
Poured onto the head
Of the One
Who loved him
Than love him back
Or be touched by that act
of devotion, gratitude and love

‘Foolish woman!’ Judas thought

No,

He didn’t think about Jesus
He didn’t think about Jesus’ love
He didn’t think about Jesus’ love for him,
the Administrator

No,

He was too busy thinking about the numbers
Those enchanting, mesmerizing numbers

What could be done with those numbers!
What fun!
Dollars and cents
Made sense
To him

Ah, numbers!

Downfall and ruin of many

Turning to another case
(I won’t return to this one)

There was
Once upon a time
Let’s say

A group of lawyers
Who loved
Themselves

They loved
Loving
Themselves

And they were pleased with
Themselves

And they were pleased to be called
QC
(Queen’s Counsel
If you please)

Now that they were
“Benchers”

(Oh puh-leeeeze!)

Did you say ‘sleaze’?
No, of course not!
Ahem.
I just here now did sneeze.

They wielded the power
To ruin a star
So they thought

They wielded the power
To make a new law
So they figured
They would

Something about a ‘Portal’
Something about non-payment of annual fees
Annual dues for ?
(What have you done for others lately?)

Ah yes!
(They decided)
Let’s make a new rule
All lawyers in the land
Shall visit
Our Portal
It is our Royal
Ta-da
and
Tooduhley-doo
Our Royal Command

(Queen’s Counsel
Don’t ya know)

If you don’t visit
(What!)

We Demand it, Damn You!

If you don’t visit
(How dare you, mortal!)

We Demand it, Damn You!

If you don’t visit
Our Portal

Our Beloved
Very Dear
Portal

And instead
Wait simply for the mail

Snail mail – Ha!
(Upon that we sneer!)

(We use that only when we feel
Like sending a notice
About the latest Suspension)

Then we’ll get you back
We will

We’ll take from you
Something
We treasure
(As Administrators)

And guess what it is!
A green wad of cash!

We like your cash
We don’t like you –
Regular law-abiding
Quiet and meek
Ordinary or non-practicing lawyer –
(not anything like, well, us!)
But we like your stash
That stash (you have one, right?) of cash

We’ll take it
We don’t mind
Serves you right

You didn’t visit our
Portal

You didn’t visit our
Website

You Luddite

What were you doing?
Reading a “Book”?
Taking a “Walk”?
Writing some “Blog”?
Pah.

Should have visited
Our Website
Our Portal

Don’t say we didn’t warn you

Somewhere

At some point

Sometime

And as for your “reputation”
Little wee lawyer
Well, who cares about that?
We certainly don’t.
We just care about our own
(Q.C., don’t ya know)

We’ve Declared
So there

Ta-ta for now

(We leave now for tea
We have your money
It’s all that we need
Along with
Those funds we so cleverly saved
By skipping snail mail – we’re so Eco –
on the one issue relating directly to you.)

Yeah?

Well, Luddite will fight
Luddite can write

Some words
Anyhow

Law Society of Alberta
You suck

Big Time

Here’s my finger

May God take you down
(If he so wills)

Turning to another case
(The lawyer’s case is closed)

(Briefcase
Does click
No more fridge magnets
In it
Oh, my mistake
Maybe there are some
I see there are: I see a K, an F
And oh look, I see a C and a U.
And another U.
Oh me, oh my
What can I spell?)

Gosh golly gee

What would I know?

I don’t have a QC

“Administratively Suspended”
My ass.

Am not.

That’s your fiction.

Too bad you can’t write good stuff.
Fiction or fact.

[Update, June 13: Suspension reversed after further verse and further prose to the powers-that-be.]

[Update, August 19: But in an amazing irony, the Law Society forgot to send what it said it would send, and a reminder, at the two-month mark, was necessary to tell them they hadn’t mailed cheque nor updated card.]

As I said,
Here’s another one
Another story

Once upon a time
There was a girl
Who knew next-to-nothing about numbers
And statistics and codes
And zeroes and ones
(Computer talk, don’t you know)

She didn’t want to

But she did like white pearls
And she did like blue gems
Even if only a photograph

(She also liked Chesterton.
Who once wrote a story –
First of the series –
Called ‘The Blue Cross’

A tale about someone whose
Eyes
Were “as empty as the North Sea”

A sea which is not empty
Not empty at all
Chesterton knew it

Don’t you know it?
The sea isn’t empty, and so neither were the eyes

Or did you take Chesterton at face value?
Ah.
You underestimate his work.)

(Let’s play chess
You’ll probably underestimate the pawns
Like you underestimate the comma)

Anyhow,
About the girl
Whose ancestors were surnamed
North
and came from York

She thought she’d open
A jewelry museum
MinedGems she called it
Admission was free
Just come look and come see
If you want

Her logo she planned
Blue stones
Blue gems

(Hey just like the “little blue stones”
embellishing the sapphire-covered Catholic relic that
Father Brown guarded and treasured

He knew perfectly well

Duh!

The proper name of the stones

He just didn’t use those words
Because he didn’t want to show
Everybody
How much he did know
Unless asked

No
It would spoil the watching
It would ruin the fun
Of being Underestimated
All the time
By Everyone)

Anyhow

The girl

She decided to build
Her very own place
Some kind of museum

Hmm

She needed a Builder
This she did know
Some Architect type

She searched around

She found

A one-of-a-kind
Mastermind

Little did she know it
But she knew talent when she saw it

Usually

Clever mind
Sharp eye
Fast hands

Bingo

He’s your man

She knew
She was pleased
She was grateful
She’d found
A keeper

Held him close
Liked him a lot
Proud of his skill

Mastermind
Her museum
Up and running

Hot damn

Here we go

She was pleased
She was glad

The bell on the door rung
As it swung
Open and shut
Open and shut
People coming and going
From the museum

From near and from far
“The internet is global”
He dares to say later
(!)
As if she didn’t know

But
How many
From where
She peculiarly didn’t want to know

(She didn’t watch this ‘door’ either
A door: ha – otherwise known, I suppose, as a portal.)

No
She functioned on trust
She could trust
Even if she couldn’t do

She knew
Who had the keys
And who didn’t

She didn’t keep them herself
As a matter of fact

Didn’t

Didn’t trust herself
Quite that much

With the numbers

Enchanting, mesmerizing numbers

She’d seen what they did
To the others

Ruin of many

She was glad she wasn’t
Administrator

User was fine
Good enough for her
She figured

She kept working at the back of the museum
Stringing those gems all on together
Them words
Sometimes smooth
Sometimes nice
Sometimes sharp
Sometimes fierce
She liked the words
They glittered
They sparkled
She liked her store
It was bright
It was clean
It was safe
(Architect was second to none.)

Little did she know
That her architect
Was the very infamous fellow
Known to all
Yet known to none

Flambeau himself
World-famous criminal
Stealer of gems
And wreaker of havoc
Switching and playing
And causing some shock
Plus consternation
On-line

Her blue gems
Her decor of blue stones
“Sapphires” – she styled them
Are gone now

Shaped like a T
All across the top and down through the posts
The T was crossed
Hey, kinda like The Blue Cross
The Blue Cross
Chesterton’s story

(One day I’ll learn how to put them all back)

So I guess you can call me Father Brown
‘Cause
I’ve figured him out

The most obvious giveaway
(In a collection of many)

Was

That he couldn’t quite
Touch the whole museum

There was that one necklace
That one collection of gems
He couldn’t quite disturb
Somehow

Maybe because it had his name on it
“To Isk Iks”
Or something like that

He has a heart, you see

He’s more than
A Clever mind
with a Sharp eye and
Fast hands

He’s not a robot
He’s a man
With a heart
I know it

Better than he does
Perhaps

Oh well

Isk Iks is contrite now

He just can’t bring himself
To say it
Yet

I’ll leave him be
One day
He’ll talk to me
And even to you

He’ll say he’s sorry
He infected your computer
That one time (or more)
With that virus

That came out of nowhere
Like a storm
From hell

But speaking of hell
I have another story to tell

I return to Chesterton

Tell me again

The name of that dot com
Administrator
Chesterton did trust

Who had access to
Everything

“Like a daughter” says biographer
To a couple with none
Heiress?
Can’t say

Administrator
she

His papers
His funds
His food

Some poison

Chesterton knew
At the end
How he did end

And the irony
Well,
It hit him
I’ll bet

That the writer
(G.K. himself)
Who wrote about murder
Yet never committed a crime
(Except, arguably, that one time
B&E to re-unite an object – umbrella –
to his future wife Frances)

Would be done in
Two weeks (how neatly, humanly precise)
After writing his autobiography

By someone
Who did not write
A single murd’rous line
Yet committed the crime

How do I know?

How do I know anything I’m not supposed to know?

Is it because
Chesterton is a heavy book end
On one end of a gloomy dark era
A time of tribulation
And I’m kinda like the other?

Is that why?

Is it because I’m kinda a friend?

Hmm.

Do I dare call myself
A friend of G.K.?

Hmm.

Can one person befriend another without ever meeting
on earth
Face to face?

Can one person ever love another person without ever meeting
on earth
Face to face?

After all, G.K. and I –
Well,
We haven’t actually
Physically
Met

So

Let’s not speak of the connection
Across time
Across space

Let’s call it a guess
Some speculation
Some chitter chatter
(A suggestion of murder
How very exciting!)
To make a wave
A splash
A sound for the sake of making a sound
All around

Because you all know
How much I care
About my numbers

My precious numbers

Ah

Here we go.
Around the world again.
I think.
(Of course I won’t complain about such a ride!
Nay: I prepare my Thank Tank.)

A suggestion of murder
How incredibly tragic
His blond curls
His most huggable self
Tucked in a grave

I weep.