The Gods Love a Joke

Jeff Spate

Source

The sun plunges into the ocean
A blazing titanic stone
The mother of madness opens her arms
And swallows you whole in the night

Penny she waits all alone in the dark
Her tears outnumber the stars
Her man he’s been gone now for so long
Wonders will he ever come home

Icarus cried when his wings got fried
Sailing too close to the sun
He paid for his folly with his young life
Left a poor father to grieve

No it ain’t always funny but somehow its seems
The fates they just come in between
Cause the gods love a joke just like anyone else
Especially when the joke is on you

His Verse Ended Abruptly

Like the rest of the world I saw that Robin Williams not only died, he committed suicide today. I find his death affects me more than I would have guessed. I'm crying.

I have life-long relationship with Robin Williams. One of the earliest gifts I remember getting was a Mork action figure and egg ship. His A Night at the Met album was the first and only album my father took away from me for being too "adult." My high school friends and I created a poetry club based on Dead Poets Society. While my immediate circle of friends has changed over the years, each group has spent time watching Robin Williams films. And, perhaps most importantly, the first pair of naked breasts I ever remember seeing was in The World According to Garp when my age was still in single digits.

Yes, I'm actually crying over him. Not because he died, but because he killed himself. Because I also have a lifelong relationship with depression. What makes this so confusing is that at some of the worst times of my life his work helped get me through it. I keep wondering who made him laugh? Or more to the point, who did reach out to for laughter?

I know I shouldn't take his death to heart, but I took his life to heart, so why not this too?

For him, I offer this, The Clown's Prayer:

As I stumble through this life,
help me to create more laughter than tears,
dispense more cheer than gloom,
spread more cheer than despair.

Never let me become so indifferent,
that I will fail to see the wonders in the eyes of a child,
or the twinkle in the eyes of the aged.

Never let me forget that my total effort is to cheer people,
make them happy, and forget momentarily,
all the unpleasantness in their lives.

And in my final moment,
may I hear You whisper:
"When you made My people smile,
you made Me smile."

-Anonymous-

Groucho's Poem From the Play "Animal Crackers"

When we did "Animal Crackers" we needed two minutes for a change - a scenery change - so I wrote a ridiculous poem. And I always think of whether the audiences really listens to the actor on the stage. I wrote the most ridiculous poem, you could possibly write, and tried it on the audience. And the first three weeks we did the show, we used to get a sophisticated New York audience, and they used to laugh and they used to applaud at the end. Then we started to get the out-of-towners, people from the middle west, and they thought I were serious. Here's the way it goes:
  Did you ever sit and ponder, as you walk along the strand,
that life's a bitter battle at the best.
And if you only knew it you would lend a helping hand,
then every man could meet the final test.
The world is but a stage, my friend, and life's but a game,
and how you play is all that matters in the end.
But whether a man is right or wrong, a woman gets the blame,
and your mother is your dog's best friend.
Then up came mighty Casey, and strode up to the bat,
and Sheridan was fifty miles away.
For it takes a heap of loving to make a home like that,
on the road to where the flying fishes play.
Then I used to take a chair, which the vaudeville actors used to do in those days, and I would start walking off the stage, and the last line would be:

So be a real life Pagliac'
and laugh, Clown, laugh.

Source

Fate, The Jester

by Arthur Guiterman

 The planets are bells on his motley,
   He fleers at the stars in their state,
He banters the suns burning hotly -
   The Jester whose nickname is Fate.

The lanterns that kindle their rays with
   The comets, are food for his mirth;
But, oh, how he laughs as he plays with
   His mad little bauble, the Earth

He looks on the atomies crowding
   The face of our pitiful ball;
His form in the nebulae shrouding,
   He chuckles, unnoted of all

The valorous puppets that chatter
   Superbly of Little and Great.
A flip of his finger would shatter
   The dreams of these "Masters of Fate" -


He laughs at their strivings and rages
   And tosses the murmurant sphere
To bowl through the zodiac-stages
   That measure the groove of a Year.

He laughs as he trips up the maddest
   Who scramble for power and place,
But laughs with the bravest and gladdest -
   Fate's comrades, who laugh in his face;

Who laugh at themselves and their troubles
   Whatever the beaker they quaff;
Who, laughing at Vanity's bubbles,
   Forget not to love as they laugh;

Who laugh in the teeth of disaster,
   Yet hope through the darkness to find
A road past the stars to a Master
   Of Fate in the vastness behind.

Source

The Doctor Pronounced

There once was a man named Seuss
Whose name sounded just like voice
He liked Mother Goose
and so changed to Seuss
He would've had less choice with Boyce

The Calf-Path

One day, through the primeval wood,
A calf walked home, as good calves should;

But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail, as all calves do.

Since then three hundred years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf is dead.

But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.

The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;

And then a wise bellwether sheep
Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep,

And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bellwethers always do.

And from that day, o’er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made,

And many men wound in and out,
And dodged and turned and bent about,

And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because ’twas such a crooked path;

But still they followed — do not laugh —
The first migrations of that calf,

And through this winding wood-way stalked
Because he wobbled when he walked.

This forest path became a lane,
That bent, and turned, and turned again.

This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load

Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.

And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.

The years passed on in swiftness fleet.
The road became a village street,

And this, before men were aware,
A city’s crowded thoroughfare,

And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;

And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

Each day a hundred thousand rout
Followed that zigzag calf about,

And o’er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.

A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.

They follow still his crooked way,
And lose one hundred years a day,

For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.

A moral lesson this might teach
Were I ordained and called to preach;

For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,

And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.

They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,

And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.

They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move;

But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf!

Ah, many things this tale might teach —
But I am not ordained to preach.


by Sam Walter Foss

What About Butter?

Bread

For bread the merchant labors long and late; 

For bread the beggar goes from gate to gate. 

For bread the sailor loses hearth and home,

A thousand, thousand miles bread-seekers roam.
 

For bread the wild birds fall in nets and gins;

For bread do men commit a hundred sins.

For bread the soldier dies in seige and fight;

For bread the minstrel carols day and night.

For bread men study all that man may know.

The house that wanteth bread is filled with woe;

For bread unites the family as one,

Its lack divides the father from the son.

For bread are weddings made and sermons said;

Of all good things, the first and best is bread.  

-- From Lyric Laughter by Arthur Guiterman