Jesters (To What End?)

Do I cheer, and at times haphazard jeer

At the questions so serious, of doubts to life?

Time is so simple, that to bicker and strife

Is time amounted toward better things to fear,

I am a clown, who smiles beneath his misery

And when I did fall and cry, at me, you are jovial all the same,

And a clown must not fret or ashamed but play his part and the game,

So for his last act he must remove his mask and courtesy,

And wash his flesh and painted tears away,

That laughs they seem are echoing dread,

That when I lay on the jesters death bed,

My laugh remains and memory remain, but I, gone, in unpleasant way

For my jokes have not reached the lonely and far,

For my heart has beat alone since we’d ajar,

At what end friend, can my laughter bring?;

At what end can, bring you back again?;

Should myself be as common as all else be,

Among the crowds, being one of so many?

Should I pretend to be boring and sadly

To please the audience and tact authority?

When I can sprout into song and sing and louder sing,

Break into madness and societal wrongs,

Beat upon the silence with my silly songs,

I say for certain or for certain jest to my staunch king;

And I know not what I say for I am crazy

I know not what I say for I am crazy

I know not what I say for I am crazy

And that’s how the world has made me

Always in this world, something so different is always so crazy;

And when I am dead, the laughter dies with me

And when I am dead, the sadness lies with me

And when I am dead, you all won’t live without me

And that is so funny, and that’s how the world has made me;

So you may pretend and pretend ingloriously,

And leer as I laugh uproariously,

And you all froth and beckon “To what end?

Does the jester laugh eternally

Even after his body is dead?”