The Solemn Fool

The Song of the Solemn Fool in Winter

by Foolscap

Spring is coiled under our feet
like a leopard stalking a deer,
like a sleeping buck, or a jumping jack sedated,
soon to be elated. We fast to feast,
we hunker on our haunches,
the sprinters and the amblers,
the trippers and the victors
the dressed-as-jesters and the Fools who pay
a heavy price for fooling, scorning pay.

Yes, fooling as an art demands
more than throwing custard tarts.
While pinstripe suits flash dollar signs
and social clans have each thair kind
of uniform, the fool just wears
a sign of contradiction. Stares.

The circus sells its tickets fast.
The jester prowls outside, outlasts
the clowning and the juggling. Thay growls
thair rhyming lines, thay sings and howls
and gives away thair precious things –
too many spend lives haggling.
This jack leaves money in a ditch.

Unlicensed fool! Thay claims thair pitch
outside the court. The king and priest
declares thum of all folk the least
but thay just won’t stop scratching names
thay gives thumself, and foolish claims,
and thirty thousand thousand words
on pavement, mud, and trampled turd.

Some stop and read, and throw a crust.
thay sleeps on eiderdown or dust.
thay lives on air or roasted beef,
on mushrooms, whisky, nettle leaf,
but whether warm or cold thay writes
and whether thay makes sense or bites
the hands that feed them thay insists
thay doesn’t care. Sober, pissed,
thay bangs thair tambourine, tin drum,
thay writes on windows, doors; thay hums
or bellows, chants, but words thay spins
and spins and spins and spins and spins
a dizzying whirl of sound and thought
until infinity is naught
and words collapse, and silence rules.

And many, many, many Fools
are scribbling, singing, banging drums
until brown teeth drop out of gums.
And some will hear us, some will not
and some will laugh for few have got
the ears to hear the secret tune
that sings between the lines. We goons
might see what others can’t. Stand still
and listen, look and feel. Be filled.

by Foolscap