Wednesday, January 22, 2025

A Day Without Laughter comic poem number 506 by Angela Lansbury

 


Charlie Chaplin. Picture from Wikipedia. Public domain.



A day without laughter 

Is a day wasted, said 

The great Charlie Chaplin

And so I have pasted


A series of good jokes

On my fridge's full door

The office wall, bedroom,

Plus the ceiling and floor


I don't need to read them

I smile at the paper

If I need a cheer up

The laughter comes later


I'm writing to tell you 

That's what you, too, should do

May his wish for smiling 

And more laughter come true.

-ends-

In Praise Of Short Poems

The most memorable verses are just one verse of four lines or a rhyming couplet.

I reached the natural end of this poem here. Four verses. Concise. Simple message and joke. Then I had afterthoughts and added another four verses about writing jokes for birth, marriage and death. I have on two or three memorable occasions been told by President Edward at Toastmasters International speakers' club, Online Dynamic, that my speech was long, over time, and complicated, a mixture of two messages. I had two speeches. 

As I began to write more verses of this poem, I thought, this could be a second poem about jokes from birth to death via weddings. I cut the the extra verses and made them into a second poem. 

That was a great improvement. If I had a longer spot, I could read both as one long poem or two short poems. Or one poem and the other as the encore, but on a related theme to the first. A good message for myself and other poets, and event organisers, and book editors.

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