On Watching a Re-run of Taggart, a poem by Jane Seabourne

…no, no, no: the killer was the dark-haired man,

the one with shifty eyes and massive hands,

who came back from the oil-rigs where he worked

and found out that his wife was knocking off

the hypnotherapist we first saw in Part One –

the one who kept a parrot in his lounge,

and somehow knew the drummer with the limp.

And it was him – the one with shifty eyes –

and not the parrot-loving hypnotherapist –

who killed the drummer in the nightclub’s loo

because the woman from the butcher’s shop

had given his description to Blythe Duff

(a very young PC when this was made)

and the po-lis made a photo-fit which

the drummer knew would give the game away

because she must have seen him – not Blythe Duff,

the gormless woman from the butcher’s shop

– when she went round to the haggis-boiler’s house –

the one she met at work and took a fancy to.

We saw him in the opening scene, sawing up

the missing teacher in a bath

before distributing the body parts round Glasgow.

And it was she – the missing teacher not

the love-struck woman from the butcher’s shop –

who sold the drugs that killed the daughter of

the dark-haired, shifty, oil-rig man, whose wife

was knocking off the hypnotherapist

we first saw in Part One.

I might have skipped a bit,

but I think that’s about the gist of it,

now, whose turn is it to put the kettle on…

Flash 500 Humour Verse Winning Poem Fourth Quarter 2013

For information on Flash 500 competitions, visit the Flash 500 website: www.flash500.com