Side Effects.
 
Perhaps the medication has not only supressed orgasm
But that other head-thrown-back, body-heaving pleasure, laughter.
Anxious your joke does not tumbleweed across the table
I stretch my lips into smiling That’s a good one.
Or in more raucous company, where banter battlecocks,
I force laughter painful as pneumonic breath,
fake as emoticon or LOL.
Sometimes though the real thing suddenly gifts;
I am bent double at false moustaches in pound shop,
I binge giggle at an Eddie Izzard gig,
I splurge saved shrieks at your clowning.
 
My family did not bequeath talent for art or music but
grandmother’s Norman Wisdom slapstick,
father’s Monty Python surreal,
so for years my wits were stropped to a keen edge,
but now stomach clenches at own jokes’ risk
of falling flat on face, so quips that seed in head wither in mouth.
But I long for the high praise of someone’s laughter again
at my stiletto comment, whimsical riff…
I yearn too for my humour to be balanced by daily dose;
giggles uncontrollable as hiccups at friend’s exploits,
corpsed like Dudley Moore by your un-PC asides,
belly-laugh at some absurd spectacle in the street.
IRL laughter whose side effects
switch off pain more efficiently than Co-codamol,
lifts depression higher than Prozac.

Fiona Sinclair
 
If you have any comments on this poem, Fiona Sinclair  would be pleased to hear from you.