Ben Stone’s Final Scene on Law and Order by John Doyle

So be it;
our sacrificial lamb
touches Adam Schiff like a hunk of porcelain,
brittle inside as out,
there are lights hidden from this room,
O’Flaherty’s Bar and Pool Emporium
three blocks away,
flashing its wears as every hooker
who harnessed electricity pre-Tom Edison – and wired it up
to their make-up kits and short black skirts; he’s Moriarty again, back to his stuttering slurred
neo-con villainy, something that shaped old man Schiff’s tentative embrace,
this wayward son strung-up by his smile, not porcelain-made,
no, not even that strong

John Doyle is from County Kildare Ireland, or so he alleges; he finds poetry to be a therapeutic release from horrors he must endure every day, like television sets fat to their faces with celebrity chefs and cops shows, and endless wailing of neighbours’ children having overdosed on ice-cream. He is one year older than the age David Brent was when he said he was in his 30s.