Alas, Poor Yorick

I regard the sad little man
As I stand in line at Ye Olde Churro Hut
With equal measures of pity and hatred
He wears a tri-cornered, tri-colored hat that is by design
Three sizes too large for his head
Upon each corner rests a single bell that jingles
With each act of prehistoric vaudeville that he performs
Mistaking the expression on my face as an invitation
He’s coming my way
Little does he know, I hate jesters
I hate them with the white-hot intensity of an Inquisitor’s branding iron
Jesters provoke within me a desire to transcend the Renaissance
And go back to the Stone Age
Where it would be perfectly acceptable to take a large rock
And smash his proto-mime skull in
But this is the modern era
While I’m certain that no jury in America
Would convict me for killing a jester
I stay my hand
Because this is not his fault
He doesn’t want to be a jester
No one does.
No one wants to don a pair of tights,
Paint their faces in the tradition of Emmett Kelly
And prance about like a magnificent poof
If God had granted him the stature he would have chosen to be a knight
Or at least a page
Had he been born with rakish good looks and a way with the ladies,
He could have been a rogue
And if he had been in possession of musical talent
He could have been a minstrel
(although I hate minstrels too)
But his thin, short, and sexless reality
Has collided with the Dungeons and Dragons fantasies of his youth
And the result continues his happy ambling gait
Towards my place in line at Ye Olde Churro Hut
I desperately scan the crowd for a broadsword
To cleave this clown in twain
But finding none,
I steel myself for the upcoming barrage of stale quips, bad puns, and friendly jibes
“Prithee my lord, wouldst thou like to hear the tale of Punch and Judy?”
I grab him by his massive lapels and pull him to my face

No.
No I wouldn’t.

There’s a reason why Punch and Judy didn’t make it out of the Middle Ages alive.
People are fonder of the Black Death than they are of Punch and Judy.
Now I know this isn’t your fault.
All I want is some fried dough
And I’ll leave.

The awkward silence is broken by the shout of “Huzzah! Another twenty pounds for the King!”
I release him and he scurries off to the friendly couple from Sun City
That seem quite willing to put up with his capering.
I collect my Churro and sit under a shade tree
Of all the things arcane that this Renaissance Fair had to conjure up

Alas poor Yorick.
I knew him Horatio.

About the poem “Alas Poor Yorick” by The Klute

Alas Poor Yorick was written by The Klute in 2002, originally intended for a chapbook entitled “Damn the Torpedoes”. The Klute was a popular Arizona slam poet for nearly 25 years, and this poem captures his satirical voice. Also known as Bernard Schober, The Klute often used humor to introduce new ideas into the Arizona culture. At the time, this poem was performed for mostly conservative audiences that dominated Arizona from the 1950s until the state began to flip politically in 2020.

Summary of “Alas, Poor Yorick” by The Klute

In “Alas, Poor Yorick,” The Klute offers a darkly comic and sharply observational monologue set in the most mundane of absurd modern arenas: a Renaissance Fair churro stand. The speaker, waiting in line at “Ye Olde Churro Hut,” encounters a jester — a small, pitiful man dressed in an oversized tri-cornered hat with jingling bells. The sight ignites within the narrator an almost comically violent hatred, one rooted less in the man himself and more in what he represents: forced mirth, historical reenactment gone wrong, and the discomfort of artificial joy.

As the speaker imagines crushing the “proto-mime skull” of this self-styled fool, he acknowledges the absurdity of his own reaction — “this is not his fault,” he admits — and begins to psychoanalyze the jester’s predicament. No one, he claims, wants to be a jester. Instead, life and circumstance have whittled the man into this tragicomic role, doomed to caper for others’ amusement while suppressing his dignity.

The narrative crescendos when the jester approaches, performing with “stale quips, bad puns, and friendly jibes.” The speaker’s fantasy and frustration boil over in a moment of confrontation. He grabs the man’s lapels and delivers a scathing retort: a demand for silence and a rejection of the hollow spectacle around him. The poem closes with the speaker’s self-aware echo of Hamlet’s most famous line — “Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio.” — transforming Shakespeare’s meditation on mortality into a contemporary satire on performance, identity, and modern disillusionment.

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Analysis: The Jester, the Poet, and the Human Condition

Beneath its humor, “Alas, Poor Yorick” is a deeply layered piece about frustration with artifice and longing for authenticity. The Klute’s speaker projects his existential exhaustion onto the jester — a figure both ridiculous and tragic — who serves as a mirror of humanity’s own clownish struggle to find purpose. The setting at a Renaissance Fair, a space of contrived nostalgia, underscores the tension between the past we romanticize and the hollow performance of that nostalgia in the present.

The poem’s voice blends satire and confession, a hallmark of The Klute’s performance style. His hyperbolic hatred (“the white-hot intensity of an Inquisitor’s branding iron”) collapses into reluctant empathy. The jester becomes an avatar of lost dreams and failed self-transformation — the “thin, short, and sexless reality” colliding with the “Dungeons & Dragons fantasies of his youth.” Through humor and mock aggression, the speaker grapples with his own place in a society addicted to spectacle and performance, where even rebellion feels choreographed.

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Language, Rhythm, and Tone

The poem reads like a rant-turned-revelation, fusing the theatricality of Shakespearean soliloquy with the comic rhythm of spoken word poetry. The Klute’s diction moves effortlessly between the archaic (“Prithee my lord”) and the contemporary (“I desperately scan the crowd for a broadsword”), creating a tension that mirrors the absurd coexistence of medieval pageantry and modern consumer culture.

The mock-heroic tone — elevating a churro-stand encounter into an epic battle — allows The Klute to explore the futility of righteous anger in an age of trivial distractions. Even the speaker’s imagined violence serves no purpose beyond catharsis; his rebellion ends, fittingly, in snack-time apathy beneath a “shade tree.” The final line’s allusion to Hamlet reframes this moment of quiet surrender as both humorous and mournful: in trying to reject artifice, the speaker realizes he is part of it.

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Themes: Performance, Identity, and Disillusionment

1. Performance as Survival: The jester, forced to entertain, becomes a metaphor for anyone trapped in performative social roles — whether artist, worker, or consumer.
2. Hatred as Projection: The speaker’s loathing reveals more about his own disillusionment than the jester’s flaws. His anger masks the fear that he too might be a performer without meaning.
3. The Death of Authenticity: By referencing Hamlet’s Yorick — a literal skull of a dead fool — The Klute implies that sincerity itself is dead, buried beneath layers of irony and spectacle.

This duality of humor and despair runs throughout The Klute’s work, reflecting his gothic-punk aesthetic and his philosophical fascination with mortality, absurdity, and social commentary.

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The Klute’s Arizona Legacy and Performance Style

As a leading voice in Arizona’s spoken word and performance poetry scene, The Klute (Bernard Schober) has become known for fusing theatrical flair with biting satire. His performances at venues like Lawn Gnome Publishing, Caffeine Corridor, and events like The Poe Show channel the dark wit of Edgar Allan Poe through a distinctly modern, sardonic lens.

In “Alas, Poor Yorick,” his humor masks a critique of both cultural escapism and personal alienation — themes that resonate deeply with audiences across Arizona’s desert stages, where performance poetry thrives as both art and social commentary.

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Learn More About The Klute

To explore more of The Klute’s work, performances, and influence on Arizona’s modern poetry scene, visit his full poet bio on AZPoetry.com.

Discover how his gothic wit, philosophical edge, and dark humor continue to shape the voice of Arizona poetry.