What? And Give Up Show Business?
by Aunt Shecky
All Rights Reserved
When sympathy for elephants
spread open trails of liberty,
the janitor hung up his broom
dogging their droppings no more.
The guilt-borne virus likewise spewed
to wetter venues where the guards
were moved to drop largess on whales.
So long, slippery protest signs –-
albeit water-proof –- but hard
to hoist with flippers way too short.
(A digression, not distraction, with
attention rings long split in three.)
The whiff of change began to shift
to workers who then overreached
beyond a raise or better gigs.
Like seltzer spitting up its fizz,
this shtick’s gone stale, the bubbles flat
as burst balloons with extinct twists.
Once overpopulated, tiny
cars, driven off, were left in park.
Some schlepped their silky selves to woods
to skulk and menace former fans.
What horrors morphed the comic mask!
Goodbye, madcaps; hello, mayhem.
Thus bottom-liners in their corporate tent
sent the show a century back,
like Vaudeville, dead -- but source of jokes
surviving forever as true.