Spectacle
The circus comes in tiny cars
disseminating clowns
to cure the now forsaken children
of their frowns.
They palliate unhappiness
by shaping in the mirror
new faces more like vacancy
than painted cheer.
Upon these an uncanny light
irradiates the curves
distending with the stimulation
of their nerves:
Aside from rollercoaster eyes
the lineaments are still,
transfixed into these images
by ceaseless thrill.
In vague circumference of their heads
a gloomy halo grows,
the center all encompassing
as exits close—
for darkness is peripheral,
and fails to distract;
the animals are led in file
for the next act:
A lion tamer wields a chair
and asks for volunteers;
the throng responds with quiet nods
but no one cheers.
There gape the grisly jaws again—
they’ve seen this trick before—
and bowing toward the boundless throat,
they pray for more.
The prayer is heard; the clowns return
to offer this reprieve:
their cars will take in everyone
before they leave. Ambiguity is not the same as obscurity, I suppose, but perhaps both may be worth the grit if there’s some promise in the chewing (though either might hold none). Nevertheless, I will resist the temptation to explain—with the following exception (turn back now!). I had to murder a few darlings in the making of this strange poem, but I have reserved one stanza for special treatment that proved both too direct and tonally unsuitable for the poem. Thinking the pillory may justly precede formal execution, I present it here as an insubordinate clump, and I warn you that its relative transparency might undermine the disorienting fog I produced above. As always, God bless you for your kind attentions. The pilloried stanza:
Amusement is a medicine
more obvious than joy,
sedating when it cannot sate
each girl and boy.
I wrote this out on a sheet of notebook paper so I can take it with me on my afternoon walk and give it some thought over a beer at Cherry Street Tavern, where I usually end up after my walk. So often, I read something and then move on--after all, so many of us take in our "reality" primarily through reading--but this piece compels me to linger, and linger I will, not so much with the goal of "understanding" it but with the much less elusive goal of memorizing it.
"their cars will take in everyone
before they leave."
Oof. That's a killer final phrase. Way to bring it home, Jey.