What a circus!
See the clowns come rushing in
The acrobats dancing on nets, over fire
We will never ever tire...
Sweating for our daily bread
We can’t sleep at the end of the day
While some champagne reaches the heads
Of the audience under our sway
Something must change
Look at this ‘free for all’ game
The audience, they are to blame
Luckily they're not out of our range—
Let’s exterminate them bourgeois
Smash them vases of glass
Snatch all their champagne bottles
’Til they beg for an ‘out of jail pass'
My brothers! The acrobats, the clowns!
We are so close to revenge, to bringing them down
What? A protest? Your conscience says no?
Please, never think once that your demons are echoes
Of the audience under our sway
While some champagne reaches the heads,
We can’t sleep at the end of the day
Sweating. For our daily bread
We will never ever tire:
The acrobats dancing! On nets? Over fire?
See! The clowns come rushing in!
What?! A circus?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
AN: Some of you might have noticed that the last two and first two verses of the poem have exactly the same words, but the lines are in reverse order and have different punctuation. I first came across this poetry form (the 'reverso') in a poetry book which uses the form to tell two different sides of fairytales. I thought that I'd use this form to highlight that it at heart, nothing much changes in the circus, as one group is mistreating the other at the beginning and end.
Inspiration: This poem is dedicated to CityOfOrphans not without reason. She inspired this poem with her brilliant poem 'The Ringmaster', which has very different subject matter, but also uses the circus as a metaphor for something. Check out her poetry collection 'My Poetic Escape' if you can. Many of the poems there are better than mine.
YOU ARE READING
Anarchy
PuisiAnarchy. A swirl of topics: emotions, allusions to history, social issues... And somewhere in the maelstrom comes forth rhymes and prose. Note: If you can't be bothered to read all the poems (quite understandably), I've starred the better ones.
