Big Top (Final Version) Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

God shield you from having to make nice with the spangled
backflips
in the conversations in which you were perhaps more maytime wounded
than wounding playing La Polichinelle on the glass piano
for a spell;
sprightly at first, with the first violets; now parched
from the pink lemonades;
gasping for art in the summer parades
for the word in edgewise
that used to chime, oh sad carillons
come Big Top Time and with
striped candy...
now in order to make vast allowances for the wounder
party of the first part
having to put on with a shattered heart oh
quite a show; in the taffy pull, the taffy every time
of, oh it was my fault anyway, I'm daffy
come what may
file under the games people play and the things you say
not to get clobbered again, my sawdust collapsing
friend, my only soul, so punch and judy you know;
you have hit a wall
forgive me Lord if I seem small
who used to come this way
oh almost every day just for the pink and blue cotton candy
get me out of the whole scene PLEASE
or just help me walk limping away
into the diamond day
from the forced circus of it all. the school girl angst.
the cinnamon dusted funnel cakes, the little bears
were hardly worth it.

mary angela douglas 28 january 2022; 21 march 2023