Charlie Chaplin Poem by Mark Heathcote

He became an icon, a public figure
from a struggling actor, he rose to fame.
Silent comedy was his game
With a walking cane hitched to his frame;
he walked gangly, bow-legged
with a black bowler hat on his head.

He was a tragic lone fellow,
Who'd been sent to the workhouse?
Who'd seen at 14, his mother committed?
But he's loved the world over
for his buffoonery & silly moustache
he played a dishevelled tramp.

Oh, the poor fool, the butt of the joke
he made so many weak-kneed
with a rip-roaring belly laugh
a long time before he ever spoke
especially when he did his parody of Hitler
who himself cried with unremitting laughter.