“Hello,” he said, then he raised the gun up to your head.

Huge grin, that charm­ing smile, so him–there all the while.

“I like hostages,” he re­marked. “Hostages are good.”

You’d tell him you dis­agree it you thought he’d lis­ten,

You’d yell it from moun­tain­tops, your mo­tives aren’t hid­den,

But you don’t think or hope that he ac­tu­ally would.

Per­haps it’s his face, so cheer­ful and oh so smi­ley,

that tells you he’d sim­ply look at you all too dryly.

Or else it’s the stakes, for he’s cer­tainly be­ing chased;

the po­lice and their dogs; The De­tec­tive and some hogs.

The mall is en­tirely, ut­terly de­serted.

If only you went, had not stuck around and flirted!

You would have left long be­fore this man would have blurted

That ter­ri­ble joke that was so bad it had hurted.

He seems like a lovely fel­low; you’d love to know him,

but with a joke like that, you find the chances so dim.

At least he said the cer­e­mo­nial word: “Hello.”

the one good one he’d say, ‘fore those you’d rather forgo.

For un­for­tu­nately he could not help crack­ing wise,

Even though all cringe vi­o­lently each time that he tries.

He drags you into that ugly smelly sushi place,

Then, un­know­ingly, he does com­mit his very worst:

The raw­ness of the sit­u­a­tion, he says with grace,

Is un­der­mined by your–ad­mit­tedly pretty–skirt.

“It is ever so flow­ery and oh so lovely,

The blood splat­ter surely would be a dis­as­trous shame.”

Though you think you might find you’d like it when it’s bloody,

In this case you think you may keep it clean just the same.

Per­haps you are be­ing overly per­snick­ity.

When it comes hu­mor, you find you’re much too picky.

To make wor­thy, hu­mor can be ever so tricky,

Per­haps he’s ac­tu­ally just not all that witty.

But there’s no way–in Heaven or Hell–he could­n’t know.

There’s no way–not here, not any­where–he’s not aware.

Some­one must once have told him that he ought to take care;

That hu­mor is not some­thing to be taken lightly;

That poor hu­mor is not at all pos­si­ble to bear.

You’re not witty your­self, but at least y­ou are aware.

You steal the gun away from him, so an­gry you now are.

You point it up his nose–why his nose? Yes, it’s bizarre.

You’ve al­ways loved noses–al­most as much as hu­mor,

Whether they be sniff­ing roses, or smelling sewer.

You twitch: you want to pull that oh-so-tempt­ing trig­ger.

But The De­tec­tive in­ter­rupts; comes to his res­cue.

She snatches the gun away with a too-loud snicker.

She whis­pers in your ear that she hated the joke, too.

“I just want sushi,” he says. “Is it too much to ask?”

His smile is still goofy, but you think that’s a mask.

“I com­mit­ted no crime, was just fish­ing by the lake.

I thought I would dine! You came, and star­tled me awake.”

A pig oinks, and at that point, you find you’re still in shock.

“You know what it is that you did,” said The De­tec­tive,

“So do I. It is time to come clean, be­fore you die.”

She points the gun back up his com­i­cally large nose.

His smile grows even wider still–it’s as if he knows…

Your eyes widen–could he re­ally know what you’re fac­ing?

Your in­abil­ity to read him’s yet more grat­ing.

You now know why he does it, with his sig­na­ture style.

All his thoughts, you find, are hid­den right be­hind that smile.

“Don’t worry,” he says to you. “I’ll be back in awhile.”