"I Am John Watson, I Speak for the Curls"
Written with a tip-of-the-hat to Dr. Seuss's The Lorax
On Baker Street,
where Mrs. Hudson dwells,
and out from Speedy's drift savory smells,
and the ghost of a newsboy occasionally yells,
is a door marked 221B.
And behind that door, some people say,
if you look in that flat you can still see, today,
where John Watson stood,
just as long as he could,
before somebody lifted John Watson away.
Who was John Watson?
And why was he there?
And why was he lifted and taken somewhere,
from 221B, over Mrs. Hudson's flat?
Just ask Mycroft Holmes —
he's around, getting fat.
You will not see Mycroft, but he will see you
through CCTV cameras with a full field of view.
He'll send a black car to whisk you away
to a secret location, and there he will say,
"You wanted to know about Watson, I'm sure.
Just remember, my motives were never impure.
Now, I'll tell you," he'll say with that upperclass voice,
"how John Watson departed by his own free choice.
It all started way back, when my brother was small,
and we didn't know any other children at all.
I thought him an idiot, thought him a fool.
I may have been unnecessarily cruel
in pointing out how I was smarter than he.
But then he grew up, and things changed, you will see.
As Sherlock grew older and taller, it's true,
his outrageous curls, well, also they grew.
They grew long and unruly, quite a mop on his head,
and something about that hair filled me with dread.
The longer it grew, the more bright he became,
until soon he could best me at every game.
Now, I know what you're thinking, I know what you'll say —
Sherlock simply learned more, as day followed day,
unrelated at all to the curls that were growing —
but you'd be quite wrong, as events will be showing.
One day, Mummy ordered the barber to call,
and to trim Sherlock's hair, though he put up a squall.
Well, I snuck in and picked up a lock when it fell.
I knew it was priceless — not something to sell,
but something to treasure and keep for myself —
so I put it up high on my high treasure shelf.
But looking and touching just didn't quite do it;
I knew that there had to be something else to it.
And so I experimented, one way and another,
I tried many things with the hair of my brother,
until one fine day when the truth came to me:
I had to brew Sherlock's curls into a tea.
This tea was quite special, I instantly knew.
There were magical powers infused in this brew.
As soon as I drank some my brain started spinning,
and I couldn't help it — my lips started grinning.
My IQ was rising with every sip,
my thoughts they were whirring at such a great clip,
I knew that this tea was something I needed
to ensure my intelligence was unimpeded.
The boost to my brain-power lasted all day,
but by the morrow it faded away.
Every day I had to drink the tea to renew it,
until finally there was no more hair left to brew it.
So I had to be crafty, I had to be clever,
I had to find multiple ways I could sever
the curls from my brother's head time after time.
But I never hurt him; I committed no crime.
Then one day John Watson walked into his life,
and that man would bring me nothing but strife.
He seemed to think Sherlock's hair belonged to him,
and when I tried to cut it his tone got quite grim.
"I am John Watson, I speak for the curls.
I speak for the curls, for the curls have no tongues,
and I'm asking you, sir, at the top of my lungs,
why on earth would you cut off this man's crowning glory?"
"Relax, John," I said. Then I told him my story.
"You see," I explained, using words that were small,
for John Watson did not have much brain-power at all,
"you see, in those curls there is something I need,
something good for our country, 100% guaranteed.
I need it to make me smarter than smart.
I'll show you, right here, on this cute little chart.
The ordinary masses, the people like you,
have brains hardly bigger than monkeys in the zoo.
But when I drink tea made from Sherlock's curls,
I get smarter than all of the boys and the girls,
smarter than all other women and men;
I get smart by a factor of twenty times ten.
It's for Queen and Country, so you must agree
to allow me to take Sherlock's hair for my tea."
But John Watson was stubborn. He wouldn't relent.
He waxed on, poetic, to a ridiculous extent,
about how Sherlock's curls were so sacred and pure,
so soft and so gorgeous, with such an allure,
they mustn't be tampered with, ever, oh no.
The way he went on, you'd think he was Sherlock's beau.
Well, I wouldn't be thwarted, so I hatched a new plot
to cut off Sherlock's curls without getting caught.
I waited 'til after a case, while they slept,
then into their flat like a ninja I crept.
And when they awoke, Sherlock's hair had been shorn,
leaving him just as bald as the day he was born.
John Watson showed up at my office that day.
He was bristling mad, and he had this to say:
"You think you're so smart? Well, I'm smarter than you!"
At that I just laughed. What could John Watson do?
What could John Watson do? Well, I shudder to say.
What John Watson did turned my stomach that day.
I had heard the phrase spoken, so crude and uncouth;
I had thought it a joke, but it was the truth:
John fucked Sherlock's brains out, so fierce and so savage,
my poor little brother's IQ became average.
His lustrous curls were no use to me now —
they held no more power than the hair of a cow.
Then Sherlock, a virgin no more, it is true,
he lifted John up, and he said, "I love you.
Let's run away together, to live with the bees.
I love you, my John. Will you marry me, please?"
And John, he said, "Yes." Nothing more, nothing less.
So where they are now is anyone's guess.
And that's how John Watson was lifted away,
by my brother Sherlock, who turned out to be gay.
End Notes: If you enjoyed this little Dr. Seuss/Sherlock fusion, you might want to check out "The Sherlock in the Hat."