GROCK I’m sure most of you have heard the story of the man who tells an analyst he has lost the will to live. The doctor advises the melancholy figure to go to the circus that night and spend the evening laughing at Grock, the world’s funniest clown. ‘After you have seen Grock, I am sure you will be much happier.’ The patient rises to his feet and looks sadly at the doctor. As he starts to leave the doctor says, ‘By the way, what is your name?’ The man turns and regards the analyst with sorrowful eyes. ‘I am Grock.’ Groucho Marx
in your eyes
what your mouth
*
*
it is written
is yet to speak
spongy mouth a drop down jaw
p
unhinged
an ca a k e
bleached ivories
d a z z l e r a z z le
word less a fluency of t r e m b l i n g billowing ing ing ing skirts of overcoat a breathing bellows heaving swampy dun fungus bubbling like badlands in fairy-books . . .
legs? =
leg less escalate sideway seal flippers
(pipes within) tubes of striped baggy trouser cross stage foot less by footlights rippling off
his garb expressly alive as his mask, his mime, his moues now he’s hitting the piano keys so hard
he’s soar
ing the air
or
flying sky hi SO VEREE high flying lo! saws the air with giant bow on mini-fiddle wrong side up! twirls the chair in whirl but trips over bow in purl & lands bolt upright to dance Cossack hands down mounting the chair one leg slips edge
(gasp!)
treads air
but other grips
still
next breaks seat standing framed in skeletal chair jumpingjiminycrickets clean through hoop staightupto chairback rib b a l a n c e breath l e s sss in blink sitting on shoulder bone & snatching a rib limps a way on a crutch feigns exit stops all of a sudden
stares deadpancake at seas of smiles
& utters one word
W A R U M? why?
Michael Small November 29-December 4, 2009