Joke’s On You

By Stephen Pain

Published May 1st, 1999

---

here is smut, here is racism,

the bluest of blue jokes,

the most tasteless, vile form

of humor, known, and he pokes

it with his tongue, teases it

and one can hear some of the

words, but they are indistinct

like the radios used by the french

resistance, full of innuendos,

you hear the fucks,

and you hear the word blacks

and you hear something else

and he has them, he works

in some of the oldest gags

in the smoke filled colleges

and the other clever gigs

for this is alternative humour

that makes its living on the backs

of the politically incorrect,

those comedians we would

rather conveniently forget

but look its ok to laugh

because he is making fun of them,

getting as “deliciously close” to the

smut and tasteless, that it is just short

of being sexist and racist, that it

is a form of comic foreplay

which takes us to the very edge,

to the punchline, then safely veers away,

       just before the climax.

thats how he gets his laughs.