Funeral Clowns

Yesterday, I consoled a friend who’d had a death in the family. After which I spent an hour reading the poems of A. E. Housman, whose metric rhyming quatrains conspired with the mood, and which I totally blame for inspiring this.


Funeral Clowns

Painted faces with sad makeup,
Painted teardrops rolling down,
Never was such joy in sadness,
As at the funeral for a clown

Families from a tiny limo,
One by one kept stepping out,
Were all these red nose children his?
Clown Catholics, I wouldn’t doubt

While at the viewing of their friend,
Nose blowing sounds like traffic horns,
Discussing his tragic-comic end,
Throwing cream pies and juggling as they mourn

Filling all of the parish pews,
Endless hankies are pulled and plucked at,
Stage makeup runs with teary dews,
Priest’s eulogy rhymes with Nantucket

Upon the coffin and withal,
Tied doggie balloons belie their grief,
While Tall and Skinny bear the pall,
Midget walks - hands up - underneath,

When in the grave they lay the coffin,
A sexton clown stands with a bucket,
From which gloved hands take gay confetti,
Up to the grave, where in they chuck it

The widow clown weeps seltzer water,
Torrents, gushers, constant showers,
Upon all of her sons and daughters,
This kind of stuff goes on for hours

Finale; two clown cemetery tenders
Carry in a heavy stone, until,
  They set it upright on the grave,
In hand-writ letters it's engraved;
  "See, I told you, I was ill !"