Anti-Cop: An Epic Verse Novel (Saga No. 4)

By Simon Pole

What if fallen angels got a second chance?

In The Saga of Terminal City they do, freed from prison to walk the earth, doing good -- if they can.

With Anti-Cop (No. 4) the devil has a daughter, and the fate of Terminal City hangs in the balance. Conflict is inevitable, as the forces of good and evil face-off.

30 chapters, 2400 lines of poetry, all written in modern epic verse.

Synopsis

The devil a daughter has, gestated
in strange ways by scraps of infected sin.
What hell she heralds: the wayfaring Clowns,
who from secret islands pour, to subject
and ape the orderly world. Against them,
in free arms, the cop Drayton Dreyfus stands,
while otherlings their aims in stack pursue:
the Accuser of Man, Satan's second,
plots proudly; the rich man's son D'Arcy Ash
solace seeks when in debt to Dead Jules Hart.
The dwarf, the revenant, the earthly squid,
agendas all that are in sequence played
to civic doom--counterpoised also by,
furtive echoes of, the Poor Shepherds' ploys,
that are spritely done. But the Bride, life's spouse,
in stately rest, a sacred space maintains,
a fulcrum that angelic forces tap,
that will Clown warfare oppose, and satchels
by wizards made long time ago. All this,
and more, will to resolutions be brought,
where orphans, closet lurkers, and ired wives,
nuke-armed ants, and Nithroc the Night-Raven,
will the righteous cop his fortitude test.

Bio

His mind corrupted by childhood exposure to horror movie matinees, but equally enthralled by the atmosphere of old churches, Simon Pole writes cosmic poetry from the location of Vancouver, British Columbia. A graduate of Harvard University, Simon has continued his studies of what is hidden in the dark. Writing is also in his blood, being the great-great-grandson of early Canadian poet Susie Drury.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon Pole
• Release date: Jul 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301795369

Simon Pole

His mind corrupted by childhood exposure to horror movie matinees, but equally enthralled by the atmosphere of old churches, Simon Pole writes cosmic poetry from the location of Kingsville, Ontario. A graduate of Harvard University, Simon has continued his studies of what is hidden in the dark. Writing is also in his blood, being the great-great-grandson of early Canadian poet Susie Drury.

Book preview

Anti-Cop

an epic verse novel

Simon Pole

The Saga of Terminal City

No. 4

Smashwords Edition

www.simonpole.ca

Copyright © 2013 Simon Pole

All Rights Reserved

No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of Simon Pole.

Original Cover Photo by Karen O’D

Used Under License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

About the Author

Chapter 1

A fog like this, Jules said, had not been seen,

without illuck, since days of sail and brine.

He stood, the white-bristled old tug captain,

on a obscure spit of planks, a slant dock

long sinking, and consigned to a dark nook

in a harbour bright with modern shipping.

In a pail of fish was his hand, a rope,

with blood and oil slick, entwined the other.

Unkinking himself, he stowed his slit knife,

and traipsing on a gimp leg, legacy

or heirloom of the sea’s jealous demand,

descends, a chancred hand at my shoulder,

like a bat, or ill-starred bird spying there,

the snail-fed slats of a swaying gang-plank

until docked like the scuttled submarine,

or viewing tank of a rogue admiral

we find the roll of his dwelling quarters.

Though cramped and hollow like the interior

of a tin can, through portholes shrewdly placed

the blue world of the bay bottom showing,

and with handily-wrought driftwood furnished,

it was, nonetheless as swept and ship-shape

as any coracle in prime service.

On a table of barnacled silver,

from some rich wreck or other recovered,

and with trinkets traded among sailors,

who’d ventured to and fro from ports distant,

and with the allure of spice-mad islands,

both clam and cod he set to welcome me.

A measure of gin, sweet and clear, we shared,

and when the gods of hospitality

were appeased, Dead Jules Hart asked my business.

There was on the wall of the homely place,

a cross, a touch of some higher magnitude

(though mooted more as a ward or defense

against encroachment by those lost spirits,

drowned comrades, sunk to the ocean floor, who,

of a night, bump up against the living

in their warm circles of fraternity),

this cross I considered as I asked him:

"Twelve years it has been, in variety, since

on a night of uncommon disturbance,

with wind in the trees and on the waves,

that you, once a man friendly regarded,

returned, stooped in a form none recognized.

A gravestone they showed you, mournfully carved,

and with the wayfarer’s angels adorned;

engraved too the name of one long thought dead:

you, Jules Hart, en voyage to distant shores,

in company of some disreputable sorts,

cast-abouts and expulsees from their homes,

a crew who muttered mutiny in whispers,

but engaged on the cheap by your patron,

the usurer and slumlord, Franklin Ash

in whose debt you were for rash purchases

and indentured shipped out against your will

to climes septic and debilitating.

The tales of that which befell you there tell,

all particulars, leaving nothing out,

for I, D’Arcy, the son of Franklin Ash

have come to make things right, if right be done."

The decades of pain and deprivation

burst out again on that worn face like pox,

but mastered them he did like one inured

to hardship (or with devotions passed beyond).

Oh sir, it’s you, he said, "sapling of he,

the horror, who blighted my life so hard.

Beware sir, for my hand is on the knife,

its honing my love for many a year.

But it is only the power of yonder cross

that keeps it from your neck unmanacled.

If you come sir, to make it right, for me

I will not listen, but if your remit

is remission of the deeds of your house,

then attend I will as I’m commanded

by the Justice to which we both bow."

Never so ashamed I was of my name

as in that homely can where fish float by,

where on the Trans-Continental I came,

to do penance for the deeds of my blood.

Chapter 2

In a kitchen of the plainest kind, where

on dishes of blasted plastic, a cake

was made for a party never to come,

a lady, in a housecoat like curtains,

put aside her cigarette and listened,

as one does for the horns of train or bus,

perceiving the blare, or carny barking,

of a T.V. tuned to the evening news.

Some poor soul of earnest activity,

a doofus, was to subtle ridicule

subject by the delirious anchor.

A male voice chortled in conspiracy,

wildly flattered to be in on the joke,

and glad it was not him who had a belief.

To this couple, and to their lank poodle,

in their smokehouse flat, the Ditz first appeared.

On the walls of the apartment were prints

and