I hold an impossible mirror above my head, just out of reach.

The audience can't see it, only me.
They clap and laugh and grin while I do my routine.

Meanwhile something hangs overhead.

So I'll do the dance, I'll put on the show, I'll do what they want.

But I scream within,
for mirror shards are no fickle sin.

"More! More!" they chant.

So I hold up the mirror instead.

But they know no difference.
For the mirror,
is what they've always been fed.

Exotic tightrope walker
Trying to balance on your attacks
Failing to grasp
Why she keeps tumbling to the hard ground
A flexible contortionist
Twisting into a pretzel to please your desires
Apparently not flexible enough
You're greedy-- never content
Unfortunately not a reincarnation of Houdini
She can't escape your chains that bind her
You're the crazed ringleader
Words your whip leaving welts
Open invisible wounds
She can't seem to heal
In your circus she struggles
Clowns resembling death
Dance around her, throwing her down
You sat her on the dunk tank
Full of acid disguised as water
Hit the button dropping her
She can't resurface
Drowning in the acid that is you
Trying to tame the tiger
Never to realize it-- you
Can't be tamed
Always to be the gorgeous star
To your ongoing, fatal, black circus.

My heart is thumping
like the stomping feet
of elephants.
Can you not
be so cute?
You’re making me act
like a clown.
If I could,
I would do
backflips like an
acrobat.
We all know
I’m no contortionist.
I’d try, though,
if it would impress you,
make you sit back
and eat popcorn.
But I can’t provide
that kind of entertainment
for you.
Not yet, anyway.
Keep buying tickets.

Portable Carnival.
You pack it up and roll it away two weeks to the day that it arrives. The lives of these carnies have never mattered. They exist only as a part of the traveling freakshow. Something we pay money to stare at, to laugh at, to mock. It’s degrading, but it’s how the freaks have to earn their living. It’s how Two Toe Toby affords his next meal. But he doesn’t have a favorite sit down restaurant, because they keep putting him back on a bus and sending him to a different city to manage the tilt-a-whirl; And all the hurling ***** from children's’ stomachs that are full of corn dogs and cotton candy.
Portable Portajohn.
A traveling **** storm. Citizens come and give us their paychecks in return for cheap thrills on rinky **** rides that spin their minds into oblivion. Just so they can say they’ve tasted the clouds and all of the pollution that surrounds them.
And just like that, we leave again. Vanishing into our next city, for a scheduled two week period.

The Giant felt betrayed
He remembered how-
Climbing onto his mighty, cosy lap
The Dwarf would curl up
Like a beefy baby
He'd allow himself to be undressed
The Giant would put him into the tub
Soap him and scrub him
Meanwhile, with gleeful gurgles
And goo goo gaa gaa gaa
The Dwarf would let out **** bubbles
The Giant would dry him and neatly powder
Baby talking all the while

Then, one day,
The Dwarf began to speak like a man
He'd fallen for Orange,
The Unicycle Girl
The Giant saw him mount her
As the caged lion looked on
The balneal visits soon ended

The Giant felt betrayed
(Like a mother at her son's growth, he thought)
He blew his nose into the nose rag