How to use Sarcasm in Performing Poetry

How do you write and perform sarcasm? Very delicately or you will get some sour puss to throw you a collection of soft tomatoes, or the poetry host will give you the hook and she’ll never call you back. You may even lose your reputation. What the hell, what’s that worth anyway. You have to tell it like it is, right?
Err . . . actually you don’t.
Sarcasm has its place, but as a performing poet you have to remember to use it sparingly. It’s rough humor and it can hurt. Wait a minute. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me. How wrong we were as little children. Words hang around for a long time. The greatest damage you can do to a relationship is to tell off someone in the heat of anger. It’s hard to go back once that happens, and sarcasm is like this.
Some listeners will hold on to an insult for a life time. They’ll say “See that man in the wheel chair, the old fart, why he’s the sarcastic poet who tried to tell a joke about me and my kind. We fixed that blabber mouth. We washed out that poet’s mouth.”
So use sarcasm at your own risk.

The Princess

The Princess De De Fat,
The unmarried American Empress
Ordered
For her fourth pregnancy
A pizzaburger and a cola.
It was miscarried
By bad delivery
And she had to settle
For pancake and pastrami on rye,
Giving her gas
Making her talk
Of naming the baby
Chew De Fat.