[Newspoetry] A Momentary Diversion

[Donald L Emerick]

willislove - 08:59am Mar 10, 2003 EST (# 4763 of 4860) 

JOKE OF THE DAY: 

Tony Blair phones George Bush, and asks
"What proof do you have that Iraq
has weapons of mass destruction?"
and Bush replies "Dad kept the receipts." 

NewYorkTimes reader responses and opinions...


("It's only a joke," he said,
"a momentary diversion
from more serious things,
as if dark grave matters
could be lightened up,
should be lightened up,
should not have to carry
the burden of argument."

One never jokes alone;
one joke invites another:
so, "How many jokes
does it take to change
a regime by peace,
and what's its cost
when we force fit it?"

It could only be a joke
if we did not use force,
because forced laughter,
like forced confessions,
says nothing that is true.

Nothing true happens
when it follows force,
though it truly happens,
because, just sometimes,
what you want, happens;
it is necessarily accidental,
an accident of forcing war,
with no valid relationship
to reasons for being true.

Like predecessor Freud,
in his Civilizations tract,
BFSkinner painted for us
a picture of how we are,
beyond freedom, dignity,
likely to be overpowered
by mystics and magicians,
by words masquerading
as though they were True.

Kant, contrari-wise, said,
in an Anthropological View,
that no one evades fictions,
and that all that one may do,
at best, is to find good ones:
that it is better to believe
in the possibility of good,
and to act accordingly,
than to do so otherwise.

Philosophers value jokes;
Freud, Skinner didn't see
that jokes ought to be had,
that jokes dispossess us,
even though they laughed,
and wrote in laughter, too,
they spent too much time
moaning, in mourning truth,
as if one could grasp it
so tightly as never to let go,
which would not be truth,
then, that was in a grasp,
unless you keep receipts
of what you do not have
and never give to others:
punch line pratfalls on heir.

thanks for listening,
Donald L Emerick
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