Commedia Humaine

Best leave this bitterness be
for my vilest sentences,
form my finest comedy.
Though I spontaneously combust to chuckles and grins,
The taste of my oozing humour makes me cringe.
Bitter it is, devoid of flavoured traces so sweet.
If I am right, these walls know this true.
Their echoes return the spiteful subtext to my feet.
Strange to think echoes know more than a human being.
Strange to know this roaring laughter was made by a machine.

Best admit this envy within me,
for despite how I fret and feel,
must my day form from ingredients of comedy:
slapstick falls, distant characters and mistaken identities?
I sent you a confession on a postcard,
and I hear you were thoroughly bemused by what I wrote.
As such, you’ll die of laughter after my next anecdote:

She thought it so sweet to write me a note,
smile and pass it on, convinced I’d react in due time.
To ascertain that I’d receive word, she took a pin,
placed it to the back of my head and pushed it in.
Too deep to remove, too far from the reach of my arm,
the note clings to my neck, without much harm.
Except,
when I occasionally seek resolve, it paralyzes my very spine.
If you wish to laugh, the lights tell me now would be a good time.

By JPV

Copyright March 2006