Photo by Matthias Wagner on Unsplash
When does comedy
become madness,
the comic more tragic
than humorous?
I always feared that one day
the laughs would simply end -
each of my lines
falling to earth,
limp, hollow, flat,
effectively dead.
I have been cursed
to always see the chuckle
at the darkest misfortune,
the joke on the lip
of the grave. A clown
in my young school years,
I never grew to eschew
the pratfall, the easy joke,
the crowd’s rowdy guffaw.
St. Maturinus, you who cast
out demons, the patron saint
of centuries of jesters,
either bring back
my edge, my wit,
the surrounding smiles,
the resounding laughs
or end it all, now,
in serious, somber silence.