Nothing Good Happened Today

"Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious." - Peter Ustinov

Can you imagine the bare walks, the elegant smiles
tortured to grimace when great trees fall from space?
Branches cover cities, deserts, and even float over
the surface of magnificent oceans bearing sailing
ships long lost from the deepest circle of the abyss.

Would it be funny? Would the daylight last?
Could we see all the circles, trapezoids, polygons
and other tortured glyphs made into words for
protest against this extraordinary transformation
of matter, cellulose, chlorophyll and pine tar oozing
from the warped and damaged bark – so we pray
for amber with floating daily jokes stuck in hidden
places for Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce to explode
with counter punches of dirty words made cleaner
than all the goodness of the hypocrisy in our country.

I can imagine one or both of them saying “Nothing
Good Happened Today,” but I did see President
Bush on TV wearing only one sock and unable
to speak. He stammered about how the press
conspires against him. Some say, he stole
the speech from Richard Nixon. He found
it stuffed in a large manila envelope
in a forgotten cabinet. Written across the top
at the seal in bold red marker, do not
open unless authorized by Mort Sahl.

That story could be as true as many
of the myths generated by the President
and his sail making spinners of fizz.

This litany is an absurd reconstruction
of universal life where the steps reverse
and you my fine fellow who like to laugh
with the President at legal murders and
stick-up men who steal so much they
have nothing left to measure at all.

3/16/06