Friday, October 24, 2008

Joker's Adieu

Recently the joker has come to the news, albeit for the wrong reasons as the evil guy in "Dark Knight", enacted superbly by the late Heath Ledger. Though my poem might seem to have been influenced by Heath Ledger, it is actually not. I wrote this poem when I was in college though (actually I was 20 years, 9 months and 5 days old when I wrote it). Hope you enjoy it.

Joker's Adieu
The joker took the centrestage,
For twenty years, nine months and five days
He had been doing just so -
Always appearing at the wrong moment,
Fumbling on the ropes, mumbling through the lines
All with a painted white face.
"Always wrong - never right" -
That was his watchword
For twenty years, nine months and five days.

This time, too, he came on the stage
When Bozo was juggling the hats -
The audience loved to see him that way -
"Always wrong, never right"

This was to be his last night -
He said he couldn't do it anymore,
So he came to the stage with a painted face,
"Always wrong, never right" -
Fumbling, mumbling, he told them all -
His final, parting speech:
"Last night, I tried and tried in vain
To solve a jigsaw puzzle, part by part,
Sometime in the morning, I would try again
To solve it right from the start
Till that day, my friends, I bow to you
And with a smile, I bid adieu..."

Perhaps he had some more to say
But the poison encroached his silly heart -
He fumbled, rushed through the lines
and stumbled, stuttered and fell to the ground,

"Always wrong, never right",
The audience burst into laughter,
They loved to see him that way...

6 comments:

  1. Suti:

    Lovely! Thanks again for coming back, and sharing this masterpiece.

    A very poignant poem. And the puncline "Always right, never wrong"... oops! "Always wrong, never right" leaves me w/ quite a few thoughts.

    Come to think of human psychology, one tends to find people who believe that they are always right, and that if someone's at fault, it's gotta be the other person. How interesting! It takes quite a bit maturity to acknowledge a mistake, and apologize. Not for the sake of settling the unsavory argument, but to let life be pleasant.

    I see this happening so often in business. We lose energy in pursuit of being right. Life ain't about "being right", it's all about "being happy" :-).

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  2. Very true - Vivek. Very very well said. I always say that if your conscience is clear and you are not afraid to acknowlege you are wrong, you do not need to take the help of external aids like self help books and self help trainings.

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  3. Nice. I am assuming that reflects some (if not all) emotions of a twenty year old. At 20, one does feel one has a different face for the world and a different one inside.

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  4. Well put thoughts. The age you mentioned is the perfect time when the adolescence paves way for maturity and thats when one makes these sort of understanding judgments for wrong and right.

    Good to see you had such talents and thoughts even that time :)

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  5. Replies
    1. Thanks Madsie, I switched on to photography - you can check me out on https://www.flickr.com/photos/fotosynthesizer

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