The Greatest Show On Earth (a curtain call)

The Greatest Show on Earth (Circus Ring 1)

We had gathered again for Christmas.  

Each one of us aching, uncomfortable,

a coarse wool scarf around a bare neck.

The wind was low and swept across the barely

dying grass of the “Care Center.” Too warm

for snow but cold enough. The Greatest Show

on Earth is not Barnum & Bailey’s Circus.

The greatest show on earth is the spectacle

of a family at Christmas. One

performed by family members every

year, actors and mimes, people that mouth and move

and that have memorized their parts over

a lifetime.  A three-ring circus with clowns

and acrobats, a strong man and a fat

lady. Freaks and freak shows. Toothless grins and

sunken cheeks by hallway actors that do

nothing more than disgust the audience. 

The Greatest Show on Earth (Circus Ring 2)

The wheels squeaked and squelched a kind of testament,

wall bumpers nicked with careless turnabouts

Nothing more than languid resentment

That calls to question a familiar route.

Old portraits of patrons and tinsel dust the wall

Wryly grinning at what’s behind the door

Now witnesses to seeing them flailing all

Helpless and bare, fleshy stains on the floor.

A call to the chair for respite and relief,

One could only hope it didn’t creep away

Once thought of as ephemeral and brief

Has become entrenched, a place to stay.

A fond memory of what legs could too

Somehow makes it all the more sacrilege

Between the vomit and the mistletoe dew

Teetering, looking over the dark ledge.

The Greatest Show on Earth (Circus Ring 3)

A brief rain reminded her

Of a time

When she was more whole

A twirl and a twist

A girl in

A pink mist, subtle movement

A swing, a sudden push

Landing hard enough

For the pain to find

Itself inside a space that

Cannot be named

But names itself to her

A marriage to a boy

And to a

place, on a well-lit street

A child or two or

Three. Pain labored

Itself each push and push.

And finally, it came by

To say, “Hello,

Remember me?” It’s time.

Finale

And we are here.

The final act. The

tree is down and

the shimmer of tinsel

and sequined angels

are stifled, boxed

for another year.

The chair has

found its harbor

again against the

shore of a steel

frame. Anchored for

another season,

(for a life).

And what was

left? The quiet

swish of an

automatic door closing

us out and her in.

The directions are clear:

rehearse your lines for

another year. Practice

your movements, your mime’s

pace. Be sure to grab

the audience’s attention,

their full attention;

especially hers. (Even

if she doesn’t

know you’re there.)

What’s heard after the show…

“I suppose that

A beautiful life

Cannot be full

Of beautiful

Things.”

For,

Have you seen

any

pictures

of us

lately?

I saw one behind some

dusty book tops

tethered lightly by

old gossamer,  

on a faraway shelf,

hidden from every eye;

even the wind

couldn’t find it through

the cracked window.

That picture confined

and held a moment

in the four corners

of a frame

of three people on a ferry,

the chopping waves cleaving us

apart; no, fastening us.

You

Me

A baby…

We have two of those now.

But where are

You?

And here am I.

Waiting in the picture

Looking out into

An empty room.

Backyards and Forts

He had changed his nephew’s diaper once and only once.  His legs had moved and jerked themselves into frenzy.  He imagined his nephew a cricket and the beautiful friction his legs would produce the sound at once menacing and masterful.  He gripped the boy’s ankles and lifted his legs.  He heard quiet laughter in the background as the shit rolled its way onto the carpet.  He pressed it into the carpet fibers as he tried to clean it up still struggling to hold the ankles in place.  His neck prickled with heat and his pores opened wide.  That’s what he remembered about changing diapers as he changed his wife’s.

         He had hoped for children.  Soon after he and M. were married she suffered a ________ and could not reproduce.  She had lost most function of her left side and all of her bottom half.  It was frightening to look at as he gripped her ankles and made every effort to wipe clean yesterday’s meal.  He had gotten used to it, he had.  But the smell and the wizened parts made his stomach turn at every wipe and at every breath.  He thought of how a newborn might look as it made its way along the rough edges of what barely resembled her part—scraped and burned from the dry and cracked skin.  Thankful for the impossibility of it. He looked at M. and smiled.  She hadn’t noticed.  He wondered what she thought about as she had her diaper changed as an adult by an adult.  He figured she imagined herself changing her own child’s diaper or walking again or remembering what laughter sounded like.  They had both forgotten how to laugh.  Before that they had lost the dignity of what had made them a whole.  Now they were a half of a whole made brittle by the indignation of life.  They believed life had not just been unfair but had treated them unfairly on purpose.  They believed that since the beginning of time the universe was surreptitious in its affairs and had schemed its way along all trajectories of space and time to land itself full force upon their once significant lives.  Of course they had fictionalized this account.  They had forgotten the place when they first began telling the “truths” of the situation and when embellishment of the minutiae of their lives became commonplace.  No one else forgot though.  It is unfortunate as they were presented with this insurmountable fact when company rang.  It was a kind of cognitive dissonance that had run wild and mad and they were on the wrong side of the harmony they thought they achieved.  But they never really got along that well.  Changing one’s diapers at thirty-five will do that to someone.  But the spaces between them had already begun to show themselves much earlier.  A ten-minute trip for a package of cigarettes somehow took one hour.  An hour trip to the grocery took three hours.  And M. had always seemed slightly jarred; she seemed lost at a juncture in her body.  He reasoned that it was something akin to when those dying leave their bodies and they float above or below or side-to-side.  Something anchored M. to their relationship but it wasn’t him and something powerful pulled M. to-and-fro at his every rejection of it.

My God, did her love her. He felt tremendous guilt though too, a pairing which never resolved itself.  Their first year of college had been… glorious.  Yes that’s the appropriate word.  He had promised himself that when he dumped whatever-her-name-was in high school he would just date in college and get laid—a lot.  He was about experiencing life.  (He now reasoned that the universe had steered him clear of that too.)  But no regrets when he met her.  

He walked to the trashcan to dispose of the diaper.  The framed photo of M. standing if removed exposed the hole in the drywall.  He moved it back ashamed to be reminded of it.  She had yelled something about pain and he had yelled that she was a pain.  The situation forced them to relinquish and maintain self-control simultaneously at all times.  As often as they hated, they also forgave.  But the hate drove forgiveness inward and captured it.  His anger had built itself into a frenetic state.

Thoughts on a poetry reading...

(Lune)

A clarity of purpose and

Phrase. Digging deep,

a furrow of the heart.

(Couplet)

Crossing a ford into a river of words,

Littered like mites on the wings of the birds

The flox and coreopsis bloom at their flight,

Nested into the night, into the good night.

 (Skeltonic Verse)

A poetry reading           

in all of the hustle

with all of the bustle

and even a minor tussle

the words have muscle

The words

made us move

we danced on our hooves

and we even grooved

certainly renewed

and we left

with a greater sense,

a little less tense

a space to recompense.

(List Poem)

Purple punch on the table

Cookies stare down diets

Fat strawberries chocolate dipped

Cheesecake rectangles with

Blueberry kiss

Open door on its hinge

Lights barely to tinge

Words do not impinge

Audience: do not cringe

(Ritual Poem)

I open my hands

And push my fingers

Together.

Locked and reverant,

Facing north and up.

Double-fisted hope:

“Please Lord, let our

hearts touch, if briefly.

Let me gaze up to your

Power, even if underfoot.

Lord, crack me wide as your

Lightning cracks night’s

temperate sky.

And Lord, give me what I

Lack so I too can be gracious.”

—Amen. 

"My Grandmother's Closet"

“My Grandmother’s Closet”

My grandmother’s closet held things I didn’t understand.

Things that were too big.

Shoes and purse straps and dresses

too threadbare to make public. There was wrapping paper angled

in the corners and rain nets balled in the pockets of coats…

Old makeup kits and curler sets

crowded its floor like broken headstones. 

Buried souvenirs from day trips and week-long vacations

deep in its crevices.  She also kept her overflow of sewing materials

in baskets and bags

careless and cascading among overstuffed

boxes and empty suitcases. 

Boxes of things unopened and new and forgotten or decayed. 

Something surely drew her attention away. 

She used her closet to keep secret birthday and Christmas gifts.

It was a place we rarely ventured. 

I imagine she kept these items because

she no longer

thought about them.

Collected

and amassed.

I wonder how often she thought of the things there

never moving and bearing the weight of new things.

Bearing the burden of time.

Layers of things compressed into sediment.

I suppose those things stood as a kind of archive

for her life

fossilized and hardened. 

"A Vacancy"

The dirt reminded me of

coffee grounds. Fine-

tuned. Loose and spacious. Arid.

Dry. Perennials once grew there.

The bed now

bleak by time and inattention.

"Tilting"

Those days we sat harmlessly

Kicking water at

the sand. The pelicans meeting

the sun in a head-on

collision. For what

it’s worth, they never did

make it. Neither did we.