stillfugue

Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Over the Top Tigers

I have answers for the questions, declarations
that will spit off my tongue like the tiger
jumping smoothly through hoops at the Ringling
Brothers show. I know the good is fake created
by a frenzy like tomato soup boiling with a canister
of salt. Cruel when frenzy creates good, but it’s fake good
and when the frenzy stops, when my mind rests,
it plunges into the darkest of the sewer pipes
that by rights are too old to hold water, pipes leaking
into a terrible, brown river that is missing its bubbles,
white bubbles. The deeply buried pipes cannot carry
my rested sickness. It is the same as what everyone has,
but mine grips hard and pulls chains tightly around my brain
as if in the tug-of-war for right to die, and I lean back
and know that I have no right to be, wondering when
the pipes will finally steal me, roll me slowly, densely,
in the terrible, brown river.