is in turn pedestrian and incoherent until I admit what I was doing.

I’ve rejected making a joke about the Affair of the Fourteen
confrontational, obscure
and the NPR podcast I heard about the rhyming police blotter in New Hampshire
cops seem to hate hearing about how it is up north

“Well, what was the poem?” he says, having swept my car with the flashlight
for guns, pot, notebooks – coming up empty.

“Well, as of now it’s:

blue light like the man
coming to tell me take it
easy in the moment.”

“That’s one too many syllables,”
he sighs, handing me my license.
“Slow it down, and replace
‘in the moment’ with something
that’s not a cliche.”