Slow Thinker
Audiences love the slow
thinker, not the frozen
Rodin, but the flesh
and bloodied one, the tragedian
in drag who gets kicked
in the rear and hits
the pause button
before bawling. Timing
is all in wowing
the crowd: cry
when you see the kick
coming, or the moment
the steel toe reaches
you, and you lose them.
Abuse, to be humor,
must come with a lag,
as if the pain were paid
for on installment, as
if the pain came,
not from the kick,
but from the slow
boil of mulling it over.
Buster Keaton was a genius
of slow thinking. He did
his own stunts, including
a 17-year stint as a kid
getting kicked on stage
by dear old dad. Back
then, they called the shtick
Vaudeville, before Buster
and his mother called
it quits, leaving pop to drop-
kick dead air, which got
laughs for (at) Charlie Brown,
but not Pater Keaton. Buster, dead-
panning, lived to make everyman
think he’d laughed at someone
else, until, thinking a little
longer on the sadsack
trying to build a house
inside a tornado, until
the anesthesia of the heart
wore off, and everyman
saw himself stumbling on.
