A Poem

The Divine Comedy

I, with poem, divine the comic wonder
And divide the smile from the laughing fit.
Is the grin more the good when we sunder
From Guffaw? The sanctity of the wit
Shan’t grant the bliss of witless slapstick hit
That canonized St. Jack-A-Knapes, buffoon,
One of the Ancient Order of the Twit.
The liturgy we’ll sing is of lampoon
Which turns ironic phrase in pleasant jest.
We now bow our tonsured heads to snicker
As it descends, the chortling mystic rest,
On we few that get the joke. The thicker
Heads beside us, with bovine face bemused,
Are confused by mild humour with alarm.
While worship of the funny and amused
Can speak the gentlemanly art of charm
To lightly flush our ladies blush with grace,
The peasants choose to riot at the farce.
The great unwashed, the vulgar, set a pace
Of pratfalls, landing laughing on their arse.

by Evan Wilson