: To Kidding Around By Kenneth Koch Kidding around...

To Kidding Around
By Kenneth Koch

Kidding around you are terrible sometimes
When I feel that I have to do it
Suddenly behaving like an ape, piling up snow on top of
   a friend
When I know that isn’t going to win her heart;
Screaming for no reason very loud, eating in a noisy way,
Running and barking as if I were a dog through the
dimly lighted streets
Frightening the inhabitants, bashing myself into
   cut-outs
Or Mannequins in a store-window display, and yelling
   Boffo!
I am having so much fun
Seemingly. But isn’t this faithless seeming?
For I’m a Joker, an ass
And I can’t stop being
Ridiculous, my tongue against the window
Vlop vlap I can;t get loose
It’s frozen here!
How can I ever say what’s in my heart
While imitating the head butts of a rhinoceros
Or the arm spans of an octopus
I am nothing but a wretched clown
All manner
Of humiliating things.
Like a far-off landscape.
To be rid of the troubles
Of one person by turning into
Someone else, moving and jolting
As if nothing mattered but today
In fact nothing
But this precise moment—five thirty-one a.m.
Celery growing on the plains
Snow swirls in the mountains.

2012-02-07