What torments the mind of a comic?
Is it the hypocrisy in life?
Or is it life's sometimes oxymoronic paradoxical existence?
Were they physically and mentally sick?
Or they have more strife
than you and I?
Is their constant traveling on the road,
cheap hotel rooms
and the hookers
and the dope
and alcohol ever present,
for instance?
They made us laugh outside when they were weeping on the inside,
'The show must go on', 'Break a leg',
- until they died.
True musicians, writers, painters, actors and comedians,
-they are all quite the same,
But who is to blame?
Society, culture, mass media, it is very complex.
What fame takes away, is this form a cruel hex?
They are too many questions for one to ask.
So it is befitting that their life could be summarized in the comedy/tragedy theater mask.
10-1-2010
Joe, I like this poem, I just finished watching the movie Lenny starring Dustin Hoffman, and enjoyed it. Perhaps whatever genious shone so brightly through them was such a hot-fire that what we all saw, and loved, also 'flamed-out' their brief lives; perhaps also it could be no other way; no flame, no light to shine. Better to truly live briefly, than to die lingering long in nothingness. Anyhow, very good poem, enjoyed it much.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
What an absolutely brilliant tribute to those great comedians and other artistes. And what an eulogy that would make! Joe, I cannot expand any further on what Smoky Hoss has already said. He's expressed it so brilliantly! Love this poem!