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Saul Makabim Aug 2012
Few freaks
have such impeccable taste,
Singing Pagliacci, smoking a Cuban cigar,
And sipping L'Essence de Courvoisier,
As he lowers you into the shark tank,
To feed his hungry pet.
Forget appearances
He cloaks himself in affectations,
And feigned cordiality
But he will take you down at the knees,
And kick your face until he can hide his shoe in your skull
Or put a bullet through your brain,
Before you can ask why he has an umbrella
When the weatherman said
No rain
Cobblepot
A name as Gotham
As Chapman and Wayne
Always dressed to the nines
He drinks the finest wines
But he can humiliate four thugs
Who try to mug him
In an alley
Cut the fools down in a fury
Steel shod umbrella,
Razorblade shoes,
And a gun up his sleeve
Appearances deceive
The definition of The Penguin
Torin Jan 2017
Entertain the masses
The *****
The coliseum of the gladiators
I only want to make you laugh
I only want to cry
This face to the world
This face too

Nothing
I'll have nothing and I'll smile
And dance and joke
And act a fool
A jester in the court of kings

Out on stage I make the day
In my dressing room
I cry
Mr E Sep 2014
Not all who smile are happy
Like the setting sun
Radiant as it dips to soft slumber
May shine brighter than any fluorescent star
Yet its warmth wanes and becomes but a floating orb
A coffin chiseled to perfection
A tombstone polished and secure
Yet inside a rotting face
Inside a forgotten man
Like a piano whose lost its voice
Each key, an unworldly pitch
A Steinway without a perfect note
Collecting dust in the corner room.
A singer without a song
A french model without a face
A man with a contagious smile
In the end it does not appear so...
Not all who smile are content
Xan Abyss Jan 2016
I want to be Paganini
I want to be Alexander the Great
But I'm only Pagliacci
A Faustian soul in sorrow and hate
And this is not a surrender
I will never stop fighting this war til I die
But passion is burning my heart to embers
Smiling wide hides the chaos inside

Aimed for the stars
Just to crash upon the moon
And reconstruct my broken pieces
From the ashes of my doom
I am reborn through death and madness
Scion of Nihilistic Sin
In my wake, I leave a trail of sadness
Soon all will hide inside THE GRIN

Choirs of Damnation!
Your Maestro has arrived at last!
Majestic Orchestration,
Barking dogs and shotgun blasts
The sound of frenzied feet as they pound the city streets
It's a symphony of victory against the riot police

Fear me, heroes
For I am near thee
Come one, come all
Hear ye, hear ye
The Jester dances on your Graves
the Joker wears the Crown
And the man who has the final laugh
At last will be the Clown
Character poem.
Torin Mar 2016
I am a ****** up poet
A starving artist
A punk rock Elvis
Sometimes you just gotta go all out
Because your the king
Man
And you just can't help it

Van Gogh died poor
And alone
In a field that was his last expression
He died by his own hand
And it wasn't even raining
When it should have been

I don't even see myself when I look in a mirror
And you don't see what I see when you look at me
You see a smiling lover
Enjoying life though all the struggle
I live life as Pagliacci
A ****** up poet

I put on a great show
And I weep during intermission
Sean Andersson Jun 2010
I feel
Like retiring to my bed
And lying there
Until spiders come
And cobweb me securely
To the wall I stare at

I feel
Like I’m typecast
As Pagliacci,
Recitar! Vesti la Giubba
Sung ad nauseam
Until a shepherd’s crook tugs me
Through the curtain

And it seems
I haven’t grown tired of losing
My footing while I reach for the summit

And I feel
Like there are only so many times
Someone can tourniquet their limbs
Before hesitantly clutching
To the handle of another departing car’s door
These words are mine and mine alone.
Torin Dec 2015
Laughing and loving
Pain grows deep in my heart
But I seem happy
Rangzeb Hussain Oct 2011
What have I done, my master, that angers you so?

I crept into this world on an icy cold dark night,
But once you showed me warmth and light,
My father I did not see,
Father you did for a time become to me,
I still treasure those spring days happily,
It was an age when the fresh earth laughed madly
(And you men smiled with it).

Once days of light darkened
Murky red and it was my blood I saw hardened
On your hands, my father,
My master, my friend, are
You mine enemy?

In your greatest hour I did stand by you,
Mine fatal hour was at hand and I cried out for the truth,
In my beggar’s voice I pleaded to you
To guard, today, my children and their generations too
As I once did yours.

I never sold or bargained my love
But you traded yours for scrap paper doves,
My eyes always glistened,
These days I weep salt tears and ask you to listen,
My idiot smile always seemed foolish but now I wear
Pagliacci’s lipstick.

While you desecrate my humble gravestone
I never once did the same in spite, hate or even while digging for a bone,
I shall always play the fool
Who is used as a tool
And nothing more by you.

Where are you now? Were not you and I fashioned out from blood
Of the same mud,
By the one God?
I never changed my tune which was composed by a bard
But I hear you dance to a different hymn,
They say Satan was Keeper of the Music Inn
Before he was sent down
To a place where he found a sound
That forever changed his jig.

I did have two eyes,
You used your blind eyes for lies,
My nose I gave up for your nightly protection
While you always smelt for election,
You have two deaf ears,
Mine always heard the sound of fears,
You once did have a heart, mine bled,
I hang my head and go to my earthen bed,
Compassion is a word that spells dread
For Humankind.

The rags that you men worship daily
Drove you to haunt me gaily,
If careful you are not
Those same rags will one day sink their needle teeth into your soft rot,
The needle that put me to into Death’s sleep
Will bury into you deep indeed
And bite softly it will, like lice,
Will you howl like I did *(out of pain, not cowardice),

Or are you going to offer the other cheek?

I was crucified for your guilt
Which upon my shoulders you day by day built,
Mine life was extinguished under the burning weight,
Even in rigid death you hound me mate
And thousands like me are detained,
But loyal we will remain,
In the fiery jaws of hellish Death
I never spat out my love but I bet
You never wept,
My master who once did return my love.

*What have I done, my master, that angers you so?
The tabloid press in Great Britain orchestrated a rabid campaign to outlaw the American Bulldog breed after a handful of reports filtered in about how some of these dogs had attacked people. The sensationalist reports were so sustained, on a systematic daily basis, that the government eventually capitulated and passed a law which not only forbade people from importing the breed but also for all American Bulldogs to be detained and destroyed. Instead of reprimanding irresponsible owners who may have abused and conditioned their dogs to be aggressive, the government issued a blanket ban on the entire breed. Thus, within weeks, an entire breed of dog was wiped clean from the shores of Great Britain. Police raided homes and snatched away family pets and exterminated them with lethal injection. For the crimes of a few the entire breed paid the penalty with their lives.
Appetizing morsels of snack food leftovers, jammed down the throats of the gathering’s well-meaning occupants, trapped in place, paralyzed by purchasing power, co-mingling amongst a gossamer of plague ridden staff, exercising their right to a paltry sum, at the cost of worldly dignity.

Tupperware auctioned off at a silent word, while women with crow’s feet crevices compile layers of expensive, foundry concealer, birthing a new, more melancholic Pagliacci, only to be outdone by the next in line.

Sound equipment, purchased over market value, placed on the showroom floor, mechanically regurgitating a playlist of old hits as broken hips slaughter the concept of rhythm and cadence, dancing for their youth, embarrassed by their age.

Late husband’s life insurance, blown on a new make-up line tested on Lassie, bought for the sake of a cost-free gift, which would have the woman’s palm eaten out by a monetarily starved charlatan, rented out on an hourly basis.

Sprayed odors, mixing and merging as they meet on the undersides of veiny wrists, fumigating the stale air, weakening the legs of the participants, dropping them to the floor as sequenced lights illuminate in time with an ancient billboard tune.

Eight o’clock bedtime, difficult to impose, when giddy patrons stay drunk on the bliss of over-spending, knocking off to a land of nod in unmonitored broom closets, clutching at their purchases with the vigor of a lowly man in pursuit of his bottle.

The night slows, crawling in turn with a dead clock as it ticks in place, stalemated, flinching, but not forward, only in place.

Lights leave the room, and silence ensues, the visitors leave, weighted down to a lifeless crawl by their numerous, unnecessary purchases in overfilled, non-recyclable shopping bags.
Joseph C Ogbonna Apr 2018
Fernando, I do sincerely extol thee.
You were as much passionate in symphony
as you were in death, which you faced willfully.
Cursed were the cruel war machines that silenced thee.
But still to celestial heights they lifted thee.
For in great honour at heaven's distant gates,
you became heaven's fiddler at God's request,
to play in courts before the heavenly greats,
in a manner timeless at their own behest.
Fernando Buschmann, the fiddler at the tower.
He that rendered sad tunes in his final hour,
playing Pagliacci at the twilight of life.
Continue to rest in a world void of strife,
until justice for your death we all shall see.
In memory of Fernando Buschmann(1890-1915), German Brazilian killed by the British for espionage during WW1.

— The End —