Georges Simenon Poem by Sheena Blackhall

A crooked log delivers a straight flame
Belgian's pipe-smoking spectacled writer
Bedded 10,000 women
With the sexual drive of a dozen Errol Flynns
The Netherlands Casanova in all but name

This human powerhouse wrote near 400 novels
Took 10 days to finish a book
Always wearing his lucky shirt, in his chosen nook
An Abercrombie and Fitch sports top
Always after cleaning and plugging 12 of his 300 pipes
Tobacco, fuelled his thoughts
Ever augmenting his cash, with a string of noughts
Always having fed the typewriter a fresh new ribbon
Always having 48 pencils, and paper ready to write on

Wrote his Maigret novels in a trance
Names, characters, descriptions
Scribbled on an outsize envelope, nothing left to chance
Then off like an Aintree runner of verve and polish
Surmounting ciphers, murders, corpses, motives
Fingertips and forensics, blazing round the bends
For a furious finish!

Such quirky rituals! Awake from a dreamy fog
Coffee pot filled, cup waiting
Then up at dawn.90 words per minute
Rat-at-at like machine gun fire
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

850 million sales around the world
Not bad for an altar-boy, a bed-jumping Belgian wanderer
Like a flea, like a grasshopper, leaping round 33 homes,
Chewing up continents, crashing time zones
Who else would ride a pure white stallion to market
And keep pet wolves, which ate up one pet cat?
Monsieur Simenon, of course, the man in the hat!