Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

Warning! This is just a poem.
It has nothing to do with real life
(I'm just trying to spare myself a little domestic grief here, folks)

Cirque du Soleil


for a while I was her boy toy
she bought me off the shelf, you know
until she got tired of my music and my jokes
and decided to join the circus

it's the classic manic-depressive
compulsive shopping syndrome
she sees something shiny and takes it home
then decides it doesn't fit the decor
or was it made in China out of cardboard?
it's not love anymore, it's just furniture

So she wants to join the circus
she's got her eye on the strongman
because the lion tamer is gay
she thinks there must be a better way

I always join the circus when life becomes a bore
it's the only sensible solution
you find one trick and do it to perfection
anything to amaze and delight
something never done before

I don't know what her previous occupation was
something to do with being admired but never touched
so now she wants to join the circus
or anything to get away from the furniture that she bought
and her aging body and her dreams unfulfilled
house repairs are tedious. Leave the house.
Join the circus.

I recommend it.
In the circus you must live the show
you eat and sleep your act
you practice your craft all day long
when you are not hoisting tent or shoveling elephant shit,
you are juggling torches and walking the wire
while learning to live in a community of odd-balls
and geeks and dwarves and clowns
and practicing and practicing and practicing
that's the circus life

She was born to be a contortionist
a dancer of angle and stretch
flexible as convenience
she should join the circus

I'm the daring young man on the flying trapeze
I work without a net and never say please,
only thank you and come back tomorrow
it's the greatest show on earth

The trouble with running away to join the circus
is that no matter where you run to, there you are
and when you get to the circus you will discover
that you have to work on your act every day, every minute
just like you do in the life you are trying to escape
Do it with alacrity. You are in the circus now.

the world is a circus
there is no net
i, dwarf, foolishly believe myself M.C.

i dream of running to a monastery
a single celled creature
of rice and modesty

i dream of losing my ego in the frey
hearing choruses of voices
but playing dumb

i drama queen dream of no drama
sheer oblutions in ohm
to wash my distractions
and keep me straight-jacketed towards nirvana

(tie me up! feed me one bowl of rice! make me holy!)
a human can always dream

I dream of running a monastery
but just until I retire
then I want to run a whorehouse
and be my own best customer

I dream of losing my virginity
but I could never do that
the drama makes it both
necessary and worthwhile

a grain of rice is the
single cell of sustenance
and drama is the coat of arms
for monks and nuns and circus clowns

and that's who I want in my monastery
and in my whorehouse
acrobats and wizards and buddhas

cute!

i'd bend over backwards to join the cirque du soleil.
know anybody who can pull some strings?
i'm not clownin' around! i can do a grande plie,
and fly on paper mache wings.
gimme the glitter and lights,
the mulit-colored arena!
i'd be the finest acrobat in flight
that you'd ever seena!

.....

but oh, about the boy toy thing...
if i were you, i wouldn't try it.
first off, you're a grown man!
what type of woman would buy it?
to do such a thing would be demeaning.
your head would be careening.

another career should be your call.
you could save yourself and all
the world, too!
this is more appropriate for you...

you can pull an all nighter in your
patched-sleave sweater...
become a columnist writer,
that would be better.

I'd want to be the hippopotamus
dragged in chains in the circus parade—
the kind of beast who looks oddly out of place:
tuskless face,
solid land omitting grace,
nothing of the power of a circus elephant—
a clumbering, slumbering seahorse
far and away from the river.

I'd want to be the beast in chained parade
taking melancholy for granted
and basking in the voyeurs' gaze
because chains assure I am not lost in place
and sadness indicates a plausibility for hope
and voyeurs aren't much more than children
amazed at how their cousins amble
in forms and shapes and mysteries
exploding sugar cookie cutter molds.

I've always loved the hippopotamus:
smallest of the grandest pachyderms—
largest of the sleekest giant bodies.
I wonder if within the voyeur juvenility
there’s some fat human child—
some human body blessed with global prowess
and electric ability to be broadcast indefinitely—
who watches me pass by in circus chains.

“I am the fattest of the fittest,
smallest of the largest,
hidden in publicity,
public in humility,
perfect in security,
lonely in community,
chained amidst such liberty,
free in thought and captivity,
hopeful in eternity,
owning my finality”—

and I agree, I say to the child
who watches me pass by in chains:
a hippopotamus used to watching
himself pass by in a train of whimsy
reality
perversity
that lovingly coined the truth of ballyhoo.

doreen,
thank you for taking this poem in the spirit in which it was written
and responding in kind.

joel,
as usual, your metrics are pristine
I admire your work a great deal
this is a great linear continuation of the theme