The funny life is not what you imagine from outside,
it’s mostly driving and forgetting and nowhere left to hide,
it’s mostly eating badly in the parking lots of towns,
where the club is in the basement and the ceiling fan is brown.
The funny life has moments that you wouldn’t trade for anything,
when the room is wholly with you and you feel the whole thing sing,
when the joke lands with precision and the crowd exhales as one,
and you think, this is the reason, this is why the thing is done.
The funny life, it isn’t glamorous or clean,
the funny life has distances and stretches in between,
but the moment when the laughter rises up and fills the room,
is the funniest thing about the funny life’s perfume.
The funny life will age you in specific ways and places,
and you’ll meet a certain catalog of interesting faces,
and you’ll learn a thing or two about what people need at night,
when they pay someone to make the whole bleak week feel right.
I would not trade the funny life for any other arrangement,
despite the van, the diet, and the general estrangement,
despite the nights the room went cold and nothing worked at all,
the funny life is worth it for the moments when you fall.