Not A Very Funny Man

write please read and enjoy

I have been joking about suicide in conversation lately
as though to hyperbolize despair for comedy;
I think about the front-face of my personage and begin to hate me
the attempt I made was no laughing matter,
where is the karma, belated cancelation by the speech-policing PC society
I'm no good, I might be half crazy, they credit me with trauma, documented history
it sounds like I actually signed a paper for a NDE
the trick to trigger warnings are wasted on me,
you don't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater before you turn off your TV

Sometimes, lately, I wonder if it's a red flag flying from my teeth
like my tongue, freshly squeezed stinging cuts from my gums
anxious laughter, am  I    just    pulling on the leg of my legacy,
by behaving questionably, a poet or a lunar misunderstanding,
eyes wide like two new moons, an hourglass with sand outstanding
talking to myself to be heard by someone else, a prideful soliloquy of lunacy,
ergo the ego bends my silver spoon,
and I'll be digging through these glass walls with it soon
entranced to a tune, dancing like a loon, this window-pain, you don't know,
trust is such a boon and bane,
I swoon for a swain, a drop of admiration is tanks of fuel in motivation
a kind word, risk the sonic pendulum that separates my lane
to a bitter attention getter, doused with dense sweat in winter
get this steam-storm off my brain
condensed intensity contained, I want to explode; restrain
into the chest, deep winds drawn
the humid reflux, insomnia, a long yawn

I think too often of how I'll be remembered
when there's far too much life to live
how or if I settle into any memory is in this awareness, to make not of my concern
for I have kept alive too many I resented and reviled
on a pyre of hatred that I alone fed to burn
the smoke choked my thoughts all the while
to let it go from inferno, to embers, to ashes I had to learn
patience and defiance of a forced perception
that to be nothing is equality,
everything you are seen to be is a corruption
lenses of opinion that obscure purity
oddly, the punchline shares each conception,
and given the destination, why don't more people laugh at the journey?