Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark, as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools' Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.

Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.

If I can see the end clearly --
the sum of your disappointments finally adds up to the courage to set yourself free --
should I nonetheless walk on,
celebrating each closer to the last moment,
drinking the cup to the very dregs,
mindfully aware this bottle shall be the last?

Would it be more manful or mindful to loose you now?  
If that is our inexorable destination?

Can I host that party, clownlike, weeping on the inside?  
When I know that my voice grates on your ears?
When you perceive only aggression, judgment and negativity in my words?
When you believe I don't even try to understand?

Can I be fully present in those final moments
climbing the gallows of our love,
mindful of the coming loss,
clinging to the vestige of Pandora's final gift:
What if we changed the road we're on?

Particularly, when voicing and/or
writing bon mots doth betake
chuckling clownlike me
rumbled stilled skin,
and e'en rouses
this mummified corpse
(asleep for bajillion years)
among sleepers awake,
where mine inside belly
doth pleasantly ache

jollity the best medicine
most thus spoke Zarathustra,
asper nonpareil persona
American radio broadcaster
Doctor Demento would attest,
one need not buy,
nor spend real or "FAKE"
money, yet brilliant come
back (as averred by
unnamed modest chap)
sweeter than New York cheesecake

moist definitely more
delectable than grubstake
jamming gobstopper with
yodels, ring dings,
or mouth size edible
chocolate candied drake,
a propensity for parrying
thrusts humorously recently
adopted, though occasionally
embarrass self,

and perhaps I might
momentarily even forsake
such wordplay, but
honing humorous turns
of phrases come roaring
back to partake, and
appease simple pleasure
inexplicably to satiate
passion with English
Language and slake

unquenchable thirst
experiencing euphoria,
vis a vis yours truly
melding, jump/kick starting,
forging, distilling
reasonable rhyme
(albeit short lived) giddy
as if I won sweepstake
this newfound affinity
with whittling words

manifested during opaque
throes of fatherhood,
when ceaseless parental
demands sought fast break
from learning to
accommodate lest stressful
overwhelming anguish
found me undertake
king oft times frazzled state,
where among great

anonymous dead poets
society, posthumous renown
would be small consolation
for widowed missus,
whose then two little girls,
(now grown to womanhood)
would inconsolably shake
for ever and anon drowning
their sweet sorrows,
where profuse tears
engender lachrymose lake.