This poet regrets to inform her readers that the contribution of a charge for her device battery bank has been withdrawn, even after she could have gotten her van to it next week.

In her current condition of enforced isolation it is unlikely that she will find another.

There will be insuffucient device energy for her to participate in community by reading and commenting.

She is limited, for the foreseeable future, to making one public contribution each day, offering it, along with her regrets, to any of her readers who are writers also.

*****

Recorded Reading (3:00):

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/rnwodj6m0sqsij0lnmxdx/Clownship.mp3?rlkey=g758vd4l809ri5bl55lxs19jb&st=8bc8y04c&dl=0

*****

Clownship

There’s something you should know
If you are going to hang around:
To be happy on this starship
You have to be a clown

Plenty in this fleet
Conventionally ser’ious are ~
You might be more comfortable
On one from a soberer star

Each gives its special service
In the general motif,
On this ship, ours just happens
To be comical relief

Not all the ships are grown, like ours,
Organic’lly in space
So when something goes wrong, those ships
Don’t get up in their face

Like ours, demanding justice
And a second cup of tea
And someone with solutions
Immediately!

Now, that creates some tensions
For their pilots, yes it do,
And everybody knows that tension
Isn’t good for you

It’s then they find our operators
Tend to come around
Patrolling like some Keystone Cops
For any anxious frown

To give ourselves due credit
We’re true professionals —
Wherever inner balance
And reaction worry dulls

We swing right into action
Beleaguered souls to bless
With grounding and self-centering
In the form of silliness

We’re passionate at what we do ~
Once our work we have begun,
We don’t give up until that soul
Remembers how to have some fun!

You can imagine, this affects
Life aboard our home ship some
It can be disconcerting
Depending on what world you’re from

Will you be freshemelled,
Can you take it in your stride,
When the farce of daily life
Gets broad — and deep and wide?

When some mischievous shadow
Past its owner come
Not only outpacing him
But from the ceiling hung?

When pillows make contented sounds
Every time you sit on them
And all the staff sashays around
Dressed exclusively on whim?

When, finally exhausted,
Into a comfy chair you fall,
You find some silly joke has been
Compressed into your wall?

Are you the kind of person
Instinctive understands
Some days one just prefers to go
Instead of feet, upon ones hands?…

… You say you’re seldom serious
And that you go on your hands too
Whenever the upended mode
Tends to come over you,

And that you’re just as silly,
You’re willing right here now to bet,
As even the silliest
Kind of silly gets to get?

I like the way you put that!
Yes, I see potential here —
Go ahead and get on board
I’m stamping you “All Clear!”

*****

This poet/editor is physically disabled, and lives at a fraction of her nation’s poverty level.

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