Hunched over the Underwood sometimes late at night
He strikes his keys hard to make the words flow out right
He's writing all about your worst aches, pains, fears and hurts
A pocketbook romance writer,
His name?
It's Ed Schmertz

He'll weave a tale of lost love into a yarn of woe
He'll make characters you adore split up and go
To forge their Goddamn lives in some noir hardcore city
They'll turn to crime, at which you will take pity
But at a hundred pages in, he'll offer them one last chance
To meet once more and search in each other's skirts and pants
They might get hitched in a brothel there in Las Vegas,
Maybe they'll run into Manuel Noriega's
Guards, at whom they must somehow flee in the nick of time
No matter the twist, they must find a way to escape grime
But Ed Schmertz, he knows a thing or two about romance
He'll bring in the cops, who'll suddenly cast a new glance
At our star-crossed lovers, at once who'll be in great peril,
Not seen since the time they were in school as boy and girl
Almost caught in a kiss by the principal on the prowl …

Then the cops fire on our couple, who'll collapse and howl,
Bloodstained weights that then hit the sodden, worm-covered ground
They look into each other's eyes, and then they'll have found …

Ah, but it's too late! Thus ends a new best selling book
Using a careful formula, Ed Schmertz has his hook