I scrubbed the make-up off my face.

The clown-act wasn’t working.

Who was that conservative, careful, careless, individual

looking back at me?

I, didn’t make sense.

A happy clown laughs at his own jokes

but are other people laughing?

Or maybe, they are, but not at the jokes…

I put-on my collared shirt

and sweater-vest.

I looked dangerous in the mirror,

but to everybody else

I was

a well-adjusted young man.

Life, is a comedy, or a tragedy, or NOTHING.

If you think you are getting ahead

you might lose your head

when the power isn’t there.

It feels good to laugh

and when nobody else does

to tip your head back,

and laugh

harder.

Life, is a collection of moments.

How many of them belong to you?

How many of them, do you spend, undecided?

Whether you are 92, or 42—you define your life

or your life defines you.

There is no such thing as getting ahead.

If a man has wealth

he’s holding onto it

because somebody said

he should.

What can he do with wealth,

but tell more jokes?

The saddest people

are the most careful people,

because they lack a sense of humor.

What are they holding onto?

A body can see and feel only so much on the outside

Then, it must laugh from the guts, from the inside

from deep in the diaphragm.

The insane asylums are full of laughter

until dead silence,

because

laughter, is the last gasp of the soul.