Anticipating the movies’
running off to join the circus,
he dawned the make-up of a balloon engineer.
There dangled one thought in his red-
ribboned, latex head
as he garblingly announced his wife down
from the rafters, each opening,
with sheer and colorful dread:
“Is That All There Is?”

Even the blind would come to see
his vocal contraception of her,
nightly, in a “nightmare
universe of plastic materials”
exploding from his bosom
(among which a metal flower
might be found);

but, eventually,
he would get tired of speaking
like a clown:

“Everything around me is fake,”
he’d sniff
(and the flower’d reply,
“Just like in life,”
olfactorily)—
from then on he’d decide
to mime:  To the children
sitting anxiously by
he’d open up some visual,
psychological rift
through a honk on the nose
or some rubbery gift. . .

but his wife would just hang there,
compliant,
adrift.

And he’d unleash the entire wardrobe
of some imaginary witch,
flinging projectile hankerchief-
chains in unending rainbows
this way,
that way,
and which;

but the children'd
just laugh at him
again and again
as he wiped his fading forehead
with each tightly-tied link
at a fever pitch. . .

till he landed,
all wound up, in bed,
without screaming;
shuffled off,
Halloween-dead
(but not dreaming),
in a business
not shown,
without subtlety,
meaning—

his wife
the same weight
that swung hard
from the ceiling,
as if the rigor mortised wink
from his eye’d
once more send it reeling.