Like a circus clown, he is grimed with chalk-
white dust. His eyes are slits through which
the colors of life, those of red, green,
and blue beam through. For this show
he carries a boy in his arm whose face
is only half-painted, half-powdered.
Neither one can return from where
they have been, a place where terror enters
through the eyes, displacing all fears,
leaving wide, black pupils in its wake.
Like real circus clowns, they seem to laugh
obscenely at something. At us? At it?
Maybe behind us, or nowhere
we have been? We applaud them madly,
for they were brave to be funny and chalk-white.
When these clowns cry, we will have been
long gone, our seats having folded themselves
against the half-empty popcorn bags.
But, then, the man turns towards where
the audience should be and, to seem more
comical than he already was, he bows
to show no one an ever so faint
rivulet of dark crimson that runs
from the center of his head to the middle
of where the shadow of an ear should appear.
This time, they had to pay the higher price,
the one which only true clowns must pay,
for the privilege of entry into the the absurd.
