Tuesday Poem: The ordinance of clowns

I heard a man on the radio say
there’s more to clowning than

oversize bow ties, banana skins
bandanas, braces, and

button hole flowers that spray.
No, the Whiteface, the Hobo

the Character, the Auguste
(the one with the big nose)

have slapstick codes to uphold.
Unruly tomfoolery

gives clowns a bad name.
True clowns, he said

hose down each other
not the crowd.

How funnily sad, I thought
how comically ironic.

You can’t just bend the rules
when clowning around.



Sometimes I write poems after listening to interviews on Radio New Zealand (usually while driving into town – the listening, not the writing). Visit Tuesday Poem for more poems this week.