Sense Of Humour In The Face Of A Pistol Poem by Erhard Hans Josef Lang

Two oppositional lines of events, completely
Different in view of the consequences in the lives of the men involved
Supposed, both, to have started off
From the ground of one and the same basic event,
The one in a fictional, the other being part of a more
Common-place story
Sadly, time and again, to occur in real life scenarios,

To be presented, one after the other, here
By plain juxtapositioning of its
Quintessentially momentous exchange of words.

Autobiographical prologue to the two following
Differing delineations of events communicated:

'... And as the two of us, I and another gentleman of leisure,
Of Far-Eastern breed,
Who had likewise been around hereabouts
For a number of years,
Eventually after a twenty minutes' stay at this house there had left
The ill-reputed shed inside
That bad squatters area that
We then had only hit into
Because it so happened that through repeated insinuation on the phone
I had been insisted on
To do come and dropp by that very day,
Supposedly only so as for us to get
To know one pretty girl who came to live there,
Who was just
Newly arrived back in her island home,
Well-stashed a singer who had worked for some time in wealthy near-by Japan,

And as there had been no hospitable welcoming smiles
On the face of the girl nor with the others
On our ensuing encounter when we had gone there,

Some sort of hustle and bustle being all there was inside that evil lair
Hidden so well behind a maze of tiny footpaths,

We felt like leaving from there the earlier the better.

And lo! out back on the street in the dusk there, yet
Before the companion's motor bike could have been mounted,
There from behind shrubs by the local store came
Shooting toward us one bullish lad pointing his gun at us
With a stern expression on the face.'

'You are both taken under arrest now,
And even there were no evidence on you,
I'll have you drug-tested, and
If you'll turn out positive,
And I'm sure you will,
You'll stay for good where
We'll assign you to right now.'

Two sets of hand-cuffs falling into places,
And the two boys carried off in a green van by
A chiefly corrupted turn of fate.

'Leave off these hand-cuffs from me,
So that I may go home now.
You are obviously mistaken in apprehending me and my friend.
You have not found anything on us what you were looking for.
I am without fail, so let me go home, Sir! '

'No, no, you do come with us now.
You'll turn positive in the drug-test as users of illegal stuff,
And you'll have to face a fair blow from the winds of justice this time.'

And so things came to evolve their own way,
Rather obnoxious to the hero of the tale told here,
Whose fictional counterpart was rendered a luckier
Real-time hero, by being guided
More by premonition and intuition than by mental resolve,
His set of personal instant retort
Displaying a higher stage of the human sense of humour
Than the other one's
- In the face of the pistol -,

Speaking in a whispering voice at ear-level with the foe,
Having dared to draw up a bit closer to
The pistolero official charged with ill intent:

'Oh, thanks be to the Lord that you're only a cop!
I've already thought
This here were meant to be some brutal criminal hold-up operation,
While both of us honestly don't carry any
Big amount of money on us this time -
And I'm speaking the truth, kill me or not -,

But as you are obviously - only - a cop'
- and whispering close by the cop's ear:
'In bad need of stuff -
- The very stuff you are actually paid to be weeding out -'

'Even then, dear Sir, you are mistaken in choosing us,
As much as any lousy street robber could have been in choosing us,
Inasmuch positively we do not carry on us anything the like as
What you might have been looking for.

You'll have to go inside this red-light area of slum-dwellers here,
- And you might well know yourself better where to look there exactly -,

There you might well find all the more of what
You've been out for,
And, being equipped with your pistol,
You are surely prone to get it for free, too,
And on top of it you'll get your detainee, a real big-timer for you
To bring along with you,
And one that will make you look a better cop, indeed.'

The intended detention thus having been thwarted by
An array of unexpectedly light words
In the midst of a heavy live-or-die type of situation,
Spiced with a good dash of sense of humour
That was to break off the very tip
From the planned course of corrupted police action and its ruthless intent,

And our heroes from the story were
Free to go home and do their own thing
As any other well-mannered member in a free society, too.

Many things in the world taken too serious
Ought to be taken lighter
And many things taken too light
Ought to be taken more serious.