Life Isn’t a Beanbag

I am reading a book of jokes

that looks like a book of poems

double-spaced typing, plenty of white space,

400 pages long.

almost unheard of unless it’s a ‘Collected’

& it’s by a comedian,

the comedian of comedians — Seinfeld

and it’s been 25 years in the making

so you’d think something with heft

like a comic ‘Crime & Punishment’, for instance.

Look, I wasn’t expecting Lenny Bruce or Richard Pryor

but this stuff was tame, kindergarten, Christmas cracker

material, vanilla, timid as marshmallow.

What I wanted to ask was:

where are the pangs, the pricks, the pranks

life has played on you? the prangs of relationships?

Your life couldn’t have been that cushiony, surely?

Life isn’t a beanbag, Jerry. Where is the dark matter?

All I’m saying is, you coulda done better.

After 25 years of  nothing in print,

you coulda done better, Jerry. Will you give me that?