Tug Dumbly # 44 - Funny Thing

Funny Thing

Obituaries love a good sense of humour.

Sure, she canoed to Antarctica,

modified fruit flies to pioneer research

into cancerous tumours

had a three way with Taylor and Burton

(Brando too, it’s rumoured, though who’s certain?).

She wrote thirteen fat thrillers in the bath … 

but hey, get this:  

She made people LAUGH!

Everyone wants to – kids, rabbis, drug lords,

African dictators, nuns … they mightn’t 

admit it, but all wanna win a snigger,

cop a snort, earn a guffawed good one!  

No one’s above this law. Al-Qaeda loves

a strategic fart as much as the Taliban,

ISIS rig a mean whoopee cushion, and make

mother-in-law gags between virgin plans.

Sure, insurgent humour’s not to all tastes,

like those IRA knock-knock jokes

that blew up in the face

but come the revolution fools’ll be

last against the wall,

thugs’ll want entertainment

as they liquidate the mall.

A good routine’ll stall the goons – 

it’s hard to concrete-shoe a clown

or garrote a joker with tears and piss

streaming down.

To lack in funny is to be defective,

prematurely galled, morbidly diseased.

Jokes make porous disputed borders – if  

the UN imposed punchlines war’d cease.

  

Say what you will, but the severest diva

secretly quivers to slide on stage

and deliver a sewer of dirty one-liners

slick as Joan Rivers,

the most pencil-arsed intellect

pines to crack wise,

most cat-bummed Marxist

to stick on a Groucho disguise

dignity, elegance, poise,

fuck ‘em all

for a poor second prize!

Nah, few regret chasing a chuckle,

not when they’re in the box,

laughing on the other side of their face,

all chops and knuckle.