Drifting Along

Drifting Along

Sweet Torment

A dripping tap, somewhere;

Jealous sleep finds ways to torment!

Waiting just for you…

I: An Incorrigible Gambler

Fireflies on a moonless night;

Folks at Jantar Mantar may mean nothing but

Let’s bet on the contrast, still!

A Haiku by Basho (1644-1694)*

In the cicada's cry

No sign can foretell

How soon it must die.

* I just copied this one from Basho who is the real master. I really love the depth; more you think about these three lines, more layers of fundamental truth are revealed.

The Last Joker: A Story

A Joker with a lantern is as much a joker as the one without it

But is the same true for a joker without a ball on his nose?

Consider a joker with no make-up on the face,

No funny dress, no pointy boots, no long hat.

I saw one; it was a dead serious face

But for a glint in those expressive eyes

A signal that relayed a shared sense of mischief

A cue for the observant children across the circus tent

To fill their lungs with fresh air ready to blow the canopy

With a blast of synchronized laughter

But it was no tent circus when I saw him this morning

It was a newspaper and his story it tracked.

Still a joker that he was, what a last joke he cracked!

He hung himself from a ceiling fan and the roof came crashing down

Paparazzi, full metal, impregnated editors who went into labor, anon!

The next day on the streets were crawling countless versions of ‘The murder of a clown’

As the clamor grew, the mayor had to do something, so he did:

He awarded his brother-in-law a contract

To build on public expenditure a memorial for ‘the last joker of the town’

In the lazy afternoon hours, the rains comes pouring down

I am drifting and drowning and grappling with something profound

Marking the contours of the story along the burnishing river of time

How an era faded, tastes somersaulted and the crowd vanished

Taking circus tent with them, leaving some luckless bellies exposed

How that fat belly survived and to keep the comic alive what not he tried

How contexts eroded from the consciousness and jokes died

How those serendipitous moments of laughter got rarer

And how after winning those moments the joker cried

He was a hard fellow but he went on living too long

He died long before the ethereal scythe could come along

But he kept carting his wares around the town to sell

Until all his longings and belongings gradually but decisively fell

Then one day feeling too light, he tried one of his ‘Hangman Tricks’

A funny man he was, he did it, probably, just for kicks

I can only propose a theory: why he did what he did

But a more disturbing question the rubble from the fallen roof hid

A rock on the sea shore is a rock but what about all the sand?

Is it still a rock but for us who see it only a trifle grain?

A Joker with a lantern is as much a joker as the one without it

But is the same true for a joker hanging from a ceiling fan?