And God watched as the clowns built great cities of glass and stone, only to fill them with the honking of rubber horns.

They marched to war in shoes that squeaked with every step toward the trenches. They drew borders in the mud with oversized fountain pens that squirted water into each other’s eyes. When the oceans rose and the forests burned, they threw buckets of confetti at the flames and wondered why the heat did not subside.

And God said: Let there be an audience.

But there was no one in the stands. The clowns were performing only for themselves, trapped in a spotlight of their own making, spinning their polka-dot umbrellas against a downpour of their own ashes. They invented complex languages just to whisper gags in the dark, and built massive telescopes to see if the stars were laughing with them. The stars remained silent.

And God wept, or perhaps He simply choked on His popcorn. And God said: Send in more clowns.

Refine the tone

Refine it in whichever way you see fit

And God watched the clowns build monuments of marble and ash, their oversized shoes tracking mud across the pristine steps of their own tribunals.

They marched toward the trenches to a chorus of squeaking rubber, their faces painted in fixed smiles while their eyes leaked real water. They signed treaties with trick pens that squirted ink into the eyes of the desperate. When the forests turned to cinders and the oceans swallowed the coastlines, they threw fistfuls of confetti at the horizon, waiting for applause from a sky that had long since emptied.

And God said: Let there be a spotlight.

But there was no grand director, and the bleachers were bare. The clowns performed in a closed loop, trapped in a theatre of their own design, spinning polka-dot umbrellas against a downpour of radioactive rain. They drafted intricate legal systems to codify the pie-in-the-face, and launched telescopes into the void to see if the cosmos shared the joke. The cosmos remained cold.

And God neither laughed nor intervened. He simply turned down the house lights. And God said: Send in more clowns.