"I have thought of a wholly untapped source of hilarity: nursing homes!"
you heard it here.
in related works, i offer only the following, not particularly hilarious, reflections on an elderly couple i once knew, who were patrons of such an institution for a time:
it is final enough. to die by your own hand a mere month—is it?
or years: since she lost her mind—after the beloved passed,
suffering done at last in the crying white tennis-shoed
persistent living if you can call it that facility. final.
the beloved, life’s beloved—loving, itself already mania,
de-mentation—lost sixty-year partner only alas in dementia
of senile and ever-suppressed shame sixty year so fast too much
for them alone together leave the house to the hood and rent a bed
a floor below critical where monitors attend beloved—
do his job duty devotion delight, lo, these years—a meal
and someone to administer meds, and then
bedrid, to get the word from his daughter,
she was long gone he said, was quiet
(down the hall someone cried help me someone please!)
they both believed the doctrine, lived faithfully leaving orders
for interment in accord with rising up whole and perfect
in glory together from matched adjoining plots
the final finality
after this life lived together in maniac love and faith and
after their alien isolate deaths, in separate coffins,
their cold sequestered decay.