Dirge For A Joker

Always in the middle of a kiss

Came the profane stimulus to cough;

Always from teh pulpit during service

Leaned the devil prompting you to laugh.

Behind mock-ceremony of your grief

Lurked the burlesque instinct of the ham;

You never altered your amused belief

That life was a mere monumental sham.

From the comic accident of birth

To the final grotesque joke of death

Your malady of sacrilegious mirth

Spread gay contagion with each clever breath.

Now you must play the straight man for a term

And tolerate the humor of the worm.