Laugh, Laugh, Laugh, Laugh

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 Laugh, Laugh, Laugh, Laugh
Some Christmases, there was money
and the gifts were plentiful but other
Noels were bereft. And yet, my brothers
and sisters and I made our poverty
funny. It’s who we were raised to be—
amateur comedians who told the darkest
jokes about pain and then took it farther
and laughed at agony. Nothing is free
so I think that we’ve paid a soul-price
for our humor. I’ve got the Indian boy hunch
that our punchlines have often punched
us in the face. O, we love the spotlight!
In crisis, we turn into vaudeville performers
who use slapstick comedy as nightly armor.