Dying of Laughter

It were amidst the industrial refinery markets

In the century of the 19th, when ol' Westerners shined in arguments

Wordsmithery aligned with jargon, gimmickry in spineless charlatans

Smitheries, coalminers, carcinogens

And sign-language artists;

Entertainment theatres assigning harlequins

Performances over a river, 'bove ninety "sharks," doing trickery on twine—

Some would say this jester was lion-hearted.

 

Under Elector Palatine; King Frederick of Rhine,

Widely regarded, that for his Highness, he FARTED.

 

A barrel of laughs, regaling the maj' esteemed

At banquets, they'd say he's a "ham," he ate it up laughably

On his face cracked an egg and ran the make-up, so happily

Trickling down his sock & buskin as an ode to Melpomene

Gettin' socked, busted, for buskin' acrobatics in pageantries;

He's the court's whipping boy, lauded to act out tragedies

In a cart trunk laid, straight-jacket, too cramped to breathe

Dissemblin' squirmy panic, then disassemblin' his anatomy

They close it, dislocatin' his shoulder and somehow magically—

Slips out, reappearin' in front of the horse, with an apple feedin'

Jester felt such a rush from their empathic anxiety, that he,

In ill-fated flourish, fouled the gears of a darker fantasy

Metastasized a crowd-pleaser, alluring of performative screams

That trunk, touted as a conduit to teleport through sorcery

Became a vault of sorts, a casket primed in eager soil

Seeming joyful to please the royals, completely foiled in impropriety

Just timber, nails and a velvet veil that sealed 'em entirely

At first—a thump, a stifled grunt—they scoff it as parody,

Playing dead, "It's part the show," "Comical austerity!"

The oxygen grew opulent as both parties' gasp in disparity

Clawin' the lid, knuckes split in fervent, causin' wild polarity

His jesting grin grew rigid in the grip of this hilarity

Taphephobia seeped in when "Nobody's hearing me."

Lungs bellowed to every 'HELLO' beaten by clarity

The coffin drank his pleas among earth's solidarity.

A man outside it's voice pierced, "K, now you're scaring me."

 

Mother Earth’s womb, a reverse stillborn buried 'neath

Met with no curtain call, but to pull his own in despair...

This was no accident, he may have passed and if,

You flip ears at the winds, there he be, in the fairest shrieks

Might eavesdrop the conspiracies that this scandal bred;

Did you hear? Some grave-robbers had dared to seek,

Their experience has some commoners asking this:

Where is he?