Here's a Fool For You

Here’s a Fool For You
Sarrah Loyce

If I had a penny for every brilliant thought,
I’d remain a penniless fool.
If brilliance is “distinguished
by unusual mental keenness”,
I’d rather remain a fool. “One lacking in common powers of understanding”.

I find it highly ironic; the oddity of the hated, of the praised
the fool is found uncommon;
the brilliant unusual and odd.
Both measured by their mentality, the capacity of the brain. The is no fool,
nor wise one.

Can I not be brilliant fool? Unusually keen in my lacking
of the common understanding?
Can I also be foolishly brilliant? My lacking common thought
to make me unusual and keen,
to uncommon understanding?

If you call a thought uncommon, a thought I may have had,
am I brilliant, or a fool? If you disagree,
a fool!
If not, my brilliance exceeds all before!
Ah, but who is really uncommon, if everyone agrees?
Who can be a brilliant thinker, if only having common thought? That would defy
the definition, and rend my thinking
common.

So what was it that I said, that supposedly “brilliant” thought?
Ah yes, it was common, like everyday chimney soot.
Hiding in every chimney, in every house, every living room.
Cleaning it out may be messy, intelligence, is only
willingness to hold a broom.
The effort, to pick through, the soot.

To get on hands and knees, to scrub.

Dirty, difficult.

So brilliance? Foolishness?
That’s just pretending you didn’t get it from the soot.