Redemption

Man on stilts this way comes,

with pegs, wood ‘nd screws, one

by fours, except, higher than fours – 

let’s call them whittled sevens, lucky

numbers, and colors like an exploded

toucan – crazy yellows, an incessantly

mince-pie blue, is that orange? (there’s

some orange), and a sanguine black

to equal our best guess at what is not

there when we see what is there when

we do not see – this is Midway! another

name for the gray area of in-between,

spackled word for maybe undecided, but

also for half, and we can go full or empty

with our glass, but not only, but also

representative of the sub-particled epiphany

that allows for forgetting (what how has

been) and not knowing (how what will be),

 - we give over to the carnival, with its muck

and flaps and harkers and barkers and spew

of scraps of stuck spectacles of ourselves

(mirrored not just in the funhouse but also

in the stone jars and the mud and the twisted

bottle caps flipped at the ring around the ducks),

here comes tall walker, wobbling as though

he both owns the world and is in constant

danger of falling away from it.  There above

you would hope for a different perspective,

see something new from that pantalooned

view, but no:  still the same sour, still the same

sweet, and people don’t look smaller in this new

Golgotha, just more or less dangerous.  They roll 

dice, they take their chances, testing their faith

in their belief, they dress up or down, occasion

depending on the effort of their disposition,

and as tall walker bangs from tent to stall

to tour of babble to simple ka-bloom! the crowd,

blued by cold and strangling on loyal turkey

legs, rises, only to call Jump!! Jump!  Fall!

© 2012 – Mark A. Douglas – All Rights Reserved