Jokers by Moitreyee Raju

In this theatrical spectacle of our ilk,

where life rarely feels like silk,

accustomed are we not,

to detect a joker at every spot?

No don’t get me wrong

I do know a joker’s song.

He

whose mimes are timed like a rhyme

that make us mortals forget

the tedious face of all worldly crime;

He’s an instigator of laughter,

a whimsical innovator…

He’s the joker, the clown and the jester.

A joker pokes with his jokes,

and his jokes

keeps his corporeal oven soaked.

But that rare Chaplinesque humour

is now lost…

lost in the sea of a malicious tumour.

An unusual tumour it is

made of acrimony and prejudice;

It has a radiant glow of envy too

an envy that sings like a cuckoo.

When mortals shift their focus

from morality to immorality

and cloth themselves in lacy garments

of selfishness and avaricious brutality…!

When they gloat just to stay afloat 

in the restless waters of a tourney,

when friends turn phony

and does the act of Brutus 

the trusted crony…!

When limitations get limitlessly ridiculed

by a wayward Jupiter sized molecule!

Do they not become

the hurly burly jokers

in the fracas of life’s circus?

No one to be judgmental

’cause I too am that mortal.

But often do I think

about that famous Shakespearean ink

“All the world’s a stage

And all the men and women 

merely players”!!