Humour is in my blood

Dr Campbell has a thesis,

a catalogue of comedic wordplay weapons to engage, disarm, highlight, defend, parry, attack and destroy

 

Heckler and poetress in camp and absurdity

Challenger, transgressor, subversive, rebel

Whether I’m Dr Campbell,

or Mademoiselle Camp-Belle,

humour is my disruptive and cathartic act

 

‘Even when you’re not using it, every poem you write Lee is Polari’

Indeed Joe, every poem may be a mask, a foil, a cover

But it’s not so easy for me, sometimes, to express even three seemingly banal words

 

Knock, knock, knock

Take those three little knocks between those two men in

Mr Loverman

Those same three seemingly banal words in three knocks meaning, ‘I love you’

First knock for intimacy, second for melancholy, third for comedy,

for comedy historically comes from a queer identity defence,

 when to be gay in public, to be funny like Kenneth Williams,

we had to encode our language using slang we called Polari

as a survival tactic, but also a means to express as well as emotionally protect

 

And still today, as my Polari-cum-poetry affirms, homo humour puts us back in control,

allows us to laugh at how absurd something is, including ourselves,

But don’t dare underestimate its nasty side, for our humour can be the cruellest empathy

 

‘I’ve never seen such a sad pathetic lot of roundheads and cavaliers

 All of them - nada to vada in the larder!’

Do you really know what you are laughing at?

Do you really understand what I am saying?

knock, knock, knock

does anyone ever really know what or who is knocking at the door?

Roundheads and cavaliers – not about the English Civil war!