I adopted irony as a lifestyle in my early twenties,
held everything at arm’s length for the next several twenties,
of months and then of years, maintaining careful detachment,
until irony became the only available attachment.
The ironic man is funny at a party,
good at cocktails,
good at saying the thing that makes the other person exhale,
but somewhere in the irony you lose the actual thing,
the un-ironic moment and the un-ironic sing.
Irony as a lifestyle has a beautiful high ceiling,
irony as a lifestyle has a floor that’s missing feeling,
and somewhere in the middle there’s a man who dropped the pose,
and irony as a lifestyle goes wherever sincerity goes.
I gave up irony the year the jokes stopped being funny,
the year the detachment cost me something like real money,
real in the sense of actual, the kind that can’t be replaced,
and irony as a lifestyle finally left a bitter taste.
Now I hold my observations with a gentler kind of grip,
still funny but less defended against the actual trip,
and the comedy improved when I stopped hiding in the pose,
turns out the funniest thing is what the open heart shows.