JESTER

JESTER

I suppose you would argue
from your position
of superiority
that it still counts
as camouflage
yet boots or jacket
forged from this skin
would hardly set the pace
in Milan
or Paris

too much commedia del arte
it would reek of
to flaunt
such “jester leather”

and yet, in our version
of this seminal tale, this
is, indeed the serpent’s livery

which I might hazard
an explanation, which being,
life pre-
lapsarian
bound to be at
this point quite immune
to selection, evolution
and need for decisive tactical
advantage
in the species survival race

yes
   at this stage
dressed to jest
as jester
than ambush
as ambush predator

though theology may see
clear ambush here

this
trickster of tricksters
first stand-
up comedian
sidling up, telling a few jokes.
spinning a few yarns
getting
    our first Mother, first
Father,
   convulsed with laughter,
linguisticaly impressed, to
much
   forget themselves

gorge themselves on fruit
whose prohibitedness was
and was to
remain forever, technically safe
and yet for so
many
    completely banned,
its consumption unforgivable

worse than eating the fruit
it has always been claimed they did

that giving the knowledge
of good
     and evil

this simply giving us
the, revelation of
our own
absurdity
paralleling, mirroring
the cosmos in its sense
that
   there is only absurdity
all is absurdity

opening up our species
to the horrors of
comedy
    and laughter itself.


WARLIKE

WARLIKE

 “Let me tell you something – black folks was never worried about anthrax because, half the time, we don’t open our mail no way. We might think that’s a bill. We might hold it to the light and go, ‘That’s a red slip.’ If you want to get us with anthrax, put that in a Jay-Z CD. That’s how you get us.” Aries Spears

Warlike, Aristophanes
stalks the streets
with pins
for the pompous

floats overhead
in a diigible

turning all
into buffoons

Oh, what a scourge!
did Zeus with his bolts
ever out-thunder
that laughter

crazy Dionysus
whose stage it is
must be deliriously amused

Apollo
    less so

forks in the road
facists being told
strictly to observe
total radio silence

a deus ex machine looking
like it
    could not
possibly fly

                and yet
every one fears it

Aristophanes
Aristophanes

what kind of a name is that
for such a ruthless comedian?

come to think of it,
what kind of a name for a comic
is Aries Spears?

THAT WE DO NOT HEAR

THAT WE DO NOT HEAR

we do not hear
the laughter off the gods any more

at our lovable quirks or
(too often) outright
stupidity

or as they jostle for supremacy
in their own hierarchies

at their own foibles and excesses
as we know
from Ovid and
Homer

these almost exclusively
of an amorous nature
as when
Aphrodite and Ares became
trapped and entangled
in a net woven by
Hephaestus, sinned against,
aggrieved cuckolded party,

so engrossed in each other
(and who dare blame them?)
that when the rest of
Olympus rushed
to take in this spectacle
they flatly continued,
as the gods
roared with
rough mirth and yet
were riveted with wonder
at such
a free, fabulous show

where the parties could not have
more consummately represented
their
respective sexualities and
gender polarities

if on this question of
beauty as we riff you

grab my gist and run with it wickedly

in your own imagination

of humans
laughing at gods there is
of this species
no practice, no
hope of
continuation
the mocking spirit of great Aristophanes
squashed at its first sign
dead
in its tracks

killed by those who
believe the gods, all gods
are beyond
any comedy, reflecting
their faith (ludicrous
beyond measure) that

they are
as gods themselves, our history

blighted by the rise of such
self-proclaimed deities, wondrously
inept
holy imperators
whose narcissism no
catalogue
of statues commissioned so that
the love of
the people can be felt
beyond death
continue as legacy through
all of posterity

Oh think, my friends, what the genius
of an Aristophanes, embodiment
of true
human comedy

could play before the stars, which
share our liberation, our
moment of ecstasy

and like all our
false structures are left
helpless to the humour

who knows! teetering
on the edge
veering this
way and that on the brink of collapse