The teller’s goal to induce laughter, his 

insular resolve, does not impact the

goodness (my reading of the goodness of

my good intentions [whenever citing

“good intentions” I’m only amending

a lack of intention in retrospect,

a sort of reflex dissembling or

garnishing my benign ambivalence]

matters only inasmuch as it forms

a model: what I might hope to convince 

Robyn that my intentions, opaquely 

equivocal, must have been) of the joke;  

   and laughter’s not so easy to refute

   nor drown in obfuscation later on.