ThE JoKeR ...........

The Circus
He ran the circus.
The Joker, he should have won an Oscar,
His performance was immaculate,
spectacular, unbelievable,
so out of this world
He deserved a hollywood star
A performer, a comedian, a Joker...
It was one of those jokes
Subtle,
The witty kind
Complicated humour,
The type that nearly crossed the line between sarcasm and cruel humour.
They laughed,
the Audience, the spectators, the crowd
They all laughed.
Big belly fulls of laughter,
some snickered, some hooted, some danced with glee
But mainly everyone laughed, at the spectacle in the circus ring,
except me.
I was oblivious, I did not get it.
I'm normally the witty, comic type, but this time the joke was lost on me.
But everyone else got it and so they laughed
They laughed and they hooted the whole show through.
It was a freak show, they laughed at the helpless clown all tied up in knots it couldn't loosen.
The joker, damn he was good at his act, for they all got the punchline,
yet I didn't, I failed to grasp it.
Months later
when the circus had left the town, when the freak show was over
long after
when the laughter had all but died down, when the snickers had faded and the Joker's show was nothing but a 'hit' from the past, a distant memory
It sudenely dawned on me
I got it,
The joke
I understood it,
after all this time I finally got the punchline.
For it was simple
I could see the circus ring more clearly
Name the cast and get the joke,
But,
whilst they had laughed,
The audience
the spectators
the observers at the circus ring
whilst they had giggled, and snickered, big belly fulls of laughter
As they watched the joke unfold
I didn't
When I got the joke months later
I never laughed.
I cried
and I sobbed
Big belly full guttural cries
For I knew now what I had failed to see back then in the circus ring
Our life together, a circus
He was the joker
I was the clown
I realised now what I had been too blind to grasp then
that for all that time and all that while
From the very first Act to the final curtain close
The joke was me..............the joke had been on me.