Dirty Circus
Huffing and puffing
into this old flap of a balloon
Keeper of the pinprick
while this red-faced buffoon
blows
and spits
and tries
and quits
It all used to feel so inflated
held afloat by hot air speech
and a mind for the mania
Now it takes more
than the mild maintenance
of a pair of half-assed lung pumps
to get this funny rubber off the road
and animal-twisted into something resembling
a good boy
That’s why the clown always brings the manual air-jack
His weathered airbags are well past capacity
Can’t muster the gust
yet they yell,
“You must!”
Sorry, lungs are full today
One love
One lust
I just can’t catch my fucking breath
And I can’t find a patch for the prick
Constantly leaking my best intentions
Always waking up in a puddle of previous plans
Always losing progress like I forgot to press Save
at the last checkpoint
Forever forgetting the skills I’ve acquired
along the way
No longer able
to hold in the hot air long enough
to rise above the dust and distraction
To squeeze the spout
where my breath slips out
and float above it all
until I’m nothing but a unidentified sprinkle
in the outskirts of Cloud City
learning a foreign tongue
and forgetting all about my life
down here
in this dirty circus
No
Now
I stare at a flat piece of rubber
unable to hold my weight
or even lift my toes off the tarmac
for a teasing handful of seconds
Now
I wait
in the blistering sun
hoping
that the heat alone will weld the hole
praying
that this space-bound holy scorcher
will burn the stale air from my lungs
and fill me instead
with a spirit
worthy
of the sky
.
.
.
