Two stabs at the same demon

Life Is A Jest

 

The words “Life is a jest; and all things show it.

   I thought so once; but now I know it.” are

On an old tombstone with John Gay below it.

   He wrote The Beggar’s Opera, and his star

Once lit the London stage.  I can’t recall

   The way he died, or if his final days

Were full of bitterness about his fall

   From fortune, or a play that won no praise.

What I remember is that epitaph—

   Just the right touch of Restoration wit.

Only a man who can make others laugh

   Sees to the bottom of depression’s pit:

      A gaping, hungry hole in every floor

      Against which jokes are just a thin trap door.

“But doctor—I AM Pagliacci.”

Every time a tragedian looks down,

   He sees what he expects—a gaping hole

Of nothingness—and smiles.  But when a clown

   Sees that, he frowns, and broods, and feels his soul

Infected with a challenge.  “I won’t laugh,”

   Emptiness says.  “You’re just wasting your breath.”

Great clowns hear that and want their epitaph

   To read: I GOT A SPIT-TAKE LAUGH FROM DEATH.

But it’s like Daffy Duck auditioning

   For vaudeville—tripping over his own feet

Until at last he gets the golden ring

   With the one killer bit he can’t repeat.

      And that’s Despair: it cracks up like pack ice

      At the one punch line clowns cannot do twice.

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells