Laugh Kookaburra laugh

I can see the shadows on the wall
But I don't know how to make that funny
I can see the rain drops fall
But I don't know how to make that funny
I can see the winter hall, the creatures crawl
The peasants shawl
But I don't know how to make that funny at all

I can see the window ledge
But I don't know how to make that funny
I can see the children's sledge
But I don't know how to make that funny
I can make the strongest pledge
But I don't know how to make that funny
No I don't know how to make that funny at all

Somethings are so serious
They cannot be fooled
And some people are so humourous
They simply cannot be schooled
What is there in the winter pledge
That makes good bonfire fuel?
Perhaps just our vanities
But I don't find them funny at all

It is sad not to see the funny side of life
Sadder still to laugh at it all
There must be some value in a bride becoming a wife
The must be evolution from a clown to a fool
There must be restraint or else the unexpected is too cruel
But balance that and regulate with surprise
That is the comedian's tool
To be funny, I must put on my disguise
I must not write from the heart, I must write
To trick, treat and rule
Because the jester has his cane,
That he twizzles in his hand
And he can command with his rod
The vagaries of man
Or he can highlight to them
Their very foolish natures, their ineptitudes
Their solitudes, their cruelties in God's pastures
What he misses in pathos, he makes up for
In buckets of bathos,
And it is in these anti-climaxes that he reveals
His true psychosis
That neurotic need to be loved not for who he is
But for what he wants to be
Always the illusionist
The comedian up on stage is more a kind of magician
And he puts his brothers into the shade
When he refuses their admission
For there is a kind of magic circle
A kind of comedy ring
And when you are in that arena
The jester is always the king
But I see nothing funny in that kind of play
Always smoke and mirrors
No daggers nothing to slay
Too many ghosts already
Are rising from their grave
It is a black comedy
And we are the comedian's slave

I sit and laugh like a kookaburra
But I do not know at what
Just the audience in the canopy
Laughing at a pale blue spot
While all around me smoke
Rises to the skies
The Bush fires have a monopoly
Can't be quenched by the tears in my eyes
I am just another Kookaburra
Laughing in an old gum tree
Wise and old as a salamander
Shedding another skin to break free