What Happened to the Fun?

I am bent over this notebook. The shadow
of my hand covers the ink as I write
words that come out black.

I remember days. Days building spaceships
and cartoon faces, hours spent
sculpting sand scenes

of battling armies and black cats and now
when I write I can’t add a giraffe
and a ping pong ball

without thinking it silly, without wondering
the meaning, without complicating
the paradox of writing

a giraffe without sound and the pock
of the ping pong in the poem.
This watermelon

of a cliché can’t be stopped from rolling down
a hill. It’s too bad I have to think
so hard about what’s funny

before writing down an orange penguin. It’s too
bad the serious has overtaken
the innocent, killed

the feather, driven the fun out of town
and shot the boy. It’s too bad
a joke is mathematical

and a poem doesn’t add up.