Ode to Gaiety

Go gloom
Begone glum and grim
Off with the drab drear and grumble
It's time
its pastime
to come undone and come out laughing
time to wrap killjoys in wet blankets
and feed them to the sourpusses
 
Come frisky pals
Come forth wily wags
Loosen your screws and get off your rocker
Untie the strait lacer
Tie up the smarty pants
Tickle the crosspatch with josh and guffaw
Share quips and pranks with every victim
of grouch pomposity or blah
 
Woe to the bozo who says No to
tee hee ho ho and ha ha
Boo to the cleancut klutz who
wipes the smile off his face
Without gaiety
freedom is a chastity belt
Without gaiety
life is a wooden kimono
 
Come cheerful chums
Cut up and carry on
Crack your pots and split your sides
Boggle the bellyacher
Convulse the worrywart
Pratfall the prissy poos and the fuddy duds
Take drollery to heart or end up a deadhead
at the guillotine of the mindless
 
Be wise and go merry round
whatever you cherish
what you love to enjoy what you live to exert
And when the high spirits
call your number up
count on merriment all the way to the countdown
Long live hilarity euphoria and flumadiddle
Long live gaiety
for all the laity
 
~ James Broughton

A poem for my best boy

to live in this world

you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go

- Mary Oliver

Our Jeopardy

It is good to use best china
treasured dishes
the most gentle goblets
the oldest lace tablecloth
there is a risk of course
every time we use anything
or anyone shares an inmost
mood or comment
or a fragile cup of revelation
but not to touch
not to handle
not to employ the available
artifacts of being
a human being
that is a quiet crash
the deadly catastrophe

where nothing is enjoyed or broken
or spoken or spilled
or stained or mended
where nothing is ever
lived
loved
pored over
laughed over
wept over
lost
or found.

-Thomas John Carlisle