Bigmouth Laughing Clowns
The bigmouth laughing clowns
have left the fairground for the big-time carnival.
No more sideshow alley jeering for them
– small balls lobbed down their throats;
gullets choking on jets of juvenile water.
The bigmouth laughing clowns
– are a double-act on the up-and-up –
they’re on the plaza; getting the last laugh on the stage;
vulgarised on prime-time
with their novel routine of verbiage.
The bigmouth laughing clowns
have their guttersnipe public
(laughingstocks) eating out of their hands
gobbets of popular wisdom and wise-cracks,
laughing ’til it gags.
The bigmouth laughing clowns
are on their way: the resistible rise –
inveigling themselves, charming
into hearts and minds
until they become adorable.
The bigmouth laughing clowns
fled the funfair
to jam their double-act down our throats,
as we once rammed our ping-pong balls
and scooshed our water down theirs.
The bigmouth laughing clowns
are set fair to stay:
eminence, now; pre-eminence, soon enough.
For, now that their blague isn’t merely funny,
the world is cowed by their bonhomie.
The bigmouth laughing clowns
have their impresario behind them,
still swivelling their bigmouth faces
to the crowd this way, to the crowd that way
– a bit of colour for these drab days.
The bigmouth laughing clowns’
ascent has been meteoric.
But, wait: for meteors briefly flare
then fall from grace – the firmament – and descend
as dead dust on the face of nowhere.
Douglas Lipton was born and educated in Glasgow. He has spent most of his working life in Dumfriesshire as an English Teacher, Special Educational Needs Teacher and FE college Educational Support Worker. He attended the famed Glasgow University Department of Extra Mural and Adult Education Creative Writing Class inaugurated by Philip Hobsbaum.
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