MEET MR LEE

Tags

Britain, British, Comedy, poem, poetry, Stewart Lee

MEET MR LEE

Meet Mr Lee
his comedy

no jolly jack tar
side-splitting,
belly wobbling

coarse
Blackpool Boy
slinging those
good old
British insults

your
great grandmother
used to love
(though far
more blue and
spicy
than what, God rest her
soul

she might
be pleased to recall)

but our Mr Lee
weaves in and out of
a teasingly

subversive narrative
doing a Derrida-deferral when it
comes to our presumptions
of
obvious endings, met
expectations

soon though
we on the trail, got the gist

the punchline more pinprick
than slap in the
face by
clown-glove incongruity

more
I did not realize
the politics
of this world so hopelessly,
incorrigibly absurd.

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DIY POEM

Tags

comic, metapoetic, poem, poetry, Reader, wit

DIY POEM

was writing
my DIY poem
but forgot to send

so read this one
I sent as its surrogate

imagine how it sounds, how
the words taste, feel

whether they
look back at you, straight in the eye,
or avert their gaze: outmuscled, out matched

the page waits
write it down
nib
to
paper

hell-for-leather

PUNCHLINE

Tags

comic, dinosaurs, Humanity, poem, poetry

PUNCHLINE

observe a
Tyrannosaurus Rex
look at those
ferocious jaws

massive limbs
tiny arms

do we not all see
in this the lineaments
of future comedy
genesis of
joke
as
outlandish idea

human laughter not
yet born but comet working on it
even Mr Carroll’s Jabberwock
set to
split is sides

PANTALOON

Tags

clown, Comedy, poem, poetry, shaman

PANTALOON

came across
(out of the
corner of
my eye, in
my mind’s eye)

a pantalooned shaman
dervish-dancing his way
out of town via
across a tightrope

someday the steeple
that underpinned his efforts
will register the strain
come
tumbling down

just as captured in Bakhtin’s writing
thing turned upside down
by causal consequence of
comedic license

we laugh uproariously, all
except the shamans
who shake their heads quizzically, look
back critically,
question every
ludicrous transformation of human rationality
from their unique perspective
of a shapeshift Universe
whose
spirit of dark
alchemy
they alone would claim to understand

POEM FOR RIK MAYALL

Tags

homage, poem, poetry, RIK MAYALL

POEM FOR RIK MAYALL

the plastic beauty of
comedy

rubber-faced, the slapstick
a joyous ballet beautifully choreographed

the seismic laughter shaking walls and
as such needing to be contained
not to be trusted

the Kingdom of the bland becoming
so deadly serious: it’s godlike figures
above and beyond ridicule, satire

sarcasm painted thick and fast
as sloppy as it gets given
the wide, wide, wide brush

MOTHER SHIP

Tags

Alien, comic, Eddie Murphy, joke, Mother, poem, poetry, Universe, wordplay

Caught sight of your mother
on the mother ship

she refused to dock
whilst people were saying
Eddie Murphy’s in town

his reputation for mocking insult
stretching across the galaxy
no situation of such gravity
that it can escape
his comedy

thinking of which
she peered down
at our planet
deeply unable to land

figuring some play on the word “equator”
might be what awaits her

not all the string
in string theory enough to
wrap her
parallels and meridians
the whole
Milky Way around

CUSPOID

Tags

astrology, comic, comical, poem, poetry, wordplay

love that she is a cusp
(love to kiss
her along
that cusp)

even though
she is on the cusp
of Taurus tyrannosaurus
and gorilla Gemini

INDEED

Tags

poem, poetry

INDEED

I directed
then you directed
the film in
our heads

first part
a comedy
second
part a
tragedy

and as
the villain
there
I did
indeed
exceed myself

THIS IS HOW WE CONNECT

Tags

poem, poetry

THIS IS
HOW WE
CONNECT

you poke
fun
at my poem

so much so
that your joke
went straight
through the
paper
(as though heated
to measure the
heresy of
a soul by
none but
His Holiness
Torquemada)

which brought me
in conceptualizing things
distinctly phallic
to consider the
flower
red hot poker

a more lovely ramrod
never did Nature conjure

but this tangential,
by the
by

as your joke
strikes a chord,
tickles
flesh

magically

as it fails
falls flat

the shape of
my mouth
telling all
(or comment
about
last laugh, regret)

escaping like
steam to
storm the
air

so time
we have now
author, wrong-
reader, to
enjoy, repent

philosophize that this be
how we indeed connect

WROTE YOU INTO MY LIFE

Tags

poem, poetry

WROTE YOU
INTO MY LIFE

I wrote you
into my life
thinking
of the
ending of
a Shakespearean
comedy

not the
beginning
of a tragedy

the stage
not yet littered
with enough death.