Monday, May 2, 2011

Big top chemical reaction

Alchemists and trapeze artists dance similar routines
as they hang upside down, thinking their delicious dreams.

Ropes shift, pulleys whir, and nets below brace for their next meal
while ragged patrons' eyes volley to and fro, hiding their naked screams.

Performances mesh with reviews, lulled serenely by gothic critics
with long faces, longer hands, and disembodied souls of plaster.

When does it end, this uniquely parisian dance, which by every measure
and by every footstep, keeps out the living and holds up the heretics?

"I don't know," says the ringmaster, her morbid curiosity waning
with every tinctured needle and after every gasp from the onlookers.

"I don't know."

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