By Obemata
Laughter
open your mouth the way I open mine to laugh. why are you so sad? laughter is a bestseller, happiness uncovered. didn’t Aristotle say that happiness depends on ourselves, so why are you sad? look deep into the shelves of life, look deeper, and you’ll find the hardcover of laughter, joy of discovery, of truly knowing oneself and the happy other right there in the light of discovering and knowing. you’re born and reborn in the cradle of light, in the world of delight where all sorrows are banished, laughter is welcome. recline in its laughter and rock the cradle. are you still sad?
Laughter in Five Variations
1
the story, plots and characters of life are never the same. here’s all you need to write your own story: the past and present filled with the peals of laughter, the future made of sun. someone will sit on its beach of light, happy, laughing, suntanned. as for the plots and characters, this one thing you need to know: they never remain the same.
write it down, please.
2
and laughter says: i am the standup comedian. i hold the world spellbound on the stages of laughter. laughter rings in my lines. you can laugh now.
sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad. not true. no kidding. have you not heard that a merry heart does good like medicine?
i banish sorrow. make me your plug.
i am the healer.
i heal the sectioned one. the hallucinating one. the one who roams. the one who dresses in dirty clothes of dirty places.
to laugh at sorrow, cast off your garment of sorrow. dress in Cleopatra’s pomegranate skin. welcome Caesar. bewitch him on laughter’s nuptial bed.
i am a standup comedian.
i am your forever laughter, forever better than sorrow.
i am what none possesses.
have me that you may laugh at sorrow, says laughter.
3
i am laughter – the fresh pomegranate laughing in the sun before harvest – i am.
4
I
where do sorrow and laughter come from? a child asked.
and i answered: the wells of the world filled with bleeding eyes.
i have seen too much of sorrows i do not ask the world for its sorrow, the wells for tears they do not spurn.
the broken world’s weeping.
i laugh at my sorrow.
II
is sorrow truly better than laughter?
the child asked.
and i answered:
they are Siamese. as sorrow walks with you, laughter waits at home. to welcome you.
III
why do you laugh, poet, when there are more sorrows, sadnesses, hurts, pains laid at the feet of the earth, more tears rinsing tears and spilling into the earth’s cup? the child asked.
what is the price of laughter? i asked the child.
why do you laugh, poet? another child asked.
too many sorrows are roomed in earth’s weeping eyes, too much of tears flow in earth’s poetry, it is the poet’s duty to laugh at sorrow.
i answered.
5
each teardrop is the milestone on the road that leads to the world’s empty wells, the mouths that once laughed, or the laughter that will come.
