Big Top

God shield you from having to make nice with the spangled backflips

in the conversations in which you were perhaps more maytime wounded

than wounding playing La Polichinelle on the glass piano

for a spell;

sprightly at first, with the first violets' now parched

from the pink lemonades gasping for art in the summer parades

for the word in edgewise

that used to chime, oh sad carillion

come Big Top Time and with

striped candy...

now in order to make vast allowances for the wounder

party of the first part

having to put on with a shattered heart oh

quite a show; in the taffy pull, the taffy every time

of, oh it was my fault anyway, I'm daffy

come what may

file under the games people play and the things you say

not to get clobbered again, my sawdust collapsing 

friend, my only soul, so punch and judy you know;

you have hit a wall

forgive me Lord if I seem small

who used to come this way

oh almost every day just for the pink and blue cotton candy

get me out of the whole scene PLEASE

or just help me walk limping away

into the diamond day

from the forced circus of it all.

the cinnamon dusted funnel cakes were hardly worth it.

mary angela douglas 28 january 2022