|
I Like Perry Mason Best in Black and White
By Denise Noe
I like Perry Mason best in black and white,
for such graphite shades are most evocative
of the Fabled Fifties, where Perry can live
in a boxed world, hermetically sealed tight.
Hardly Paradise, this world is Fallen indeed.
A place full of pride and lust and, most especially, greed.
To Perry Mason, Paul Drake, and Della Street,
crime is no stranger but an enemy they will often meet.
A handsome husband exposed as bigamous,
a trusted employee found duplicitous,
fraud and forgery, drinking and dice, theft and blackmail,
are the ingredients of a Perry Mason tale.
The Fifties were Newton's universe, modified by Einstein:
the guilty would confess and the innocent would be just fine.
In Perry Mason's cosmos, life invariably worked out right in the end,
for it was a world the Principle of Uncertainty had yet to amend.
Originally published in Light
|
|
The Eunuch's Advantage
by Denise Noe
Now and then, a lovely lady happens by,
distracts Paul Drake, libidinous private eye;
but she arouses no lust in Perry's heart:
in the program's puzzle, she is but a part.
Equally oblivious to pretty men,
Perry's not Raymond Burr; he just lacks all yen.
Catching each number, time, light, and shadow
for the inevitable imbroglio,
Perry Mason's thoughts can swerve not one degree.
He was TV's most powerful castrati!
Originally published in Ball Club Quarterly
|