Americans, the Circus-Folk
I can’t even begin to recall
The sheer number of times
My darling mother,
Whilst quieting us down,
Would mutter, “It’s a circus in here.”
Only now, as my mind matures,
Have I begun to realize
Just how right she truly was.
This whole damn country’s a circus.
A grotesque, large-scale scene
Of the amazing, absurd, and obscure
A show put on to rouse the interest and the…
…Laughter?
Of our audience,
The world at large.
We begin with the American president,
Our ringleader, if you will
The commander-in-chief
He runs our show…
Or at least works very hard
To convince the audience of this.
And it works
Everyone thinks the leader, in fact, leads
But, truthfully, he’s just a face for the name
A Barnum or Bailey to run our game
Second in command is the lion tamer,
Who, to the audience, reigns most powerful of all,
Our economy personified.
Partnering with the President to form the Ringling Brothers,
And what a ring, indeed.
He cracks his whip and brandishes his chair,
Subduing the lion with an elaborate conglomeration
Of cunning, manipulation, and fear
—In a word, power.—
The lion begs for his mercy,
Clawing his own dignity to shreds.
And who is this lion? one might ask
He’s obviously the lower class
The poor, the ghetto, the trailer park, the homeless,
The underclass, the bottom of the barrel
That is ever-growing, encroaching upon the middle
(Or is the middle simply crashing from grace?)
Being the largest, this lower lion looms
Looking powerful enough to rise against this oppression
And fight, revolt, maul its tamer
But upon closer inspection we see
His mane is scraggly and his fur falling out in patches
Claws clipped and teeth barely even bared
He has surrendered to the economy, The Man.
The middle class falls and crashes
A necessary risk, when your task is a tight-rope walker
Or flipping, twirling, soaring acrobat
With a bar or a (not-so-) protective parasol as their only weapons,
The middle class teeter-totters on the tight-rope called survival
Throwing themselves into the air to grasp frantically at a hoop or two
Trying fruitlessly to raise themselves
Succeeding only in trapping themselves in an endless chase
Or plummeting down to a socioeconomic death,
Becoming another hair in the lion’s unkempt mane.
Occasionally, an acrobat will break the cycle,
Rupture the mold,
Strap on a helmet for protection, the entrepreneur
Stuffs himself down the barrel of an impossibly large gun
And has someone light his ass on fire,
Giving a whole new definition to the term ‘cannonball’,
And using some explosive new idea to propel himself
Forward, upward, outward
Into the stilt-walkers’ existential sphere.
Making precarious balance look so easy,
The stilt-walkers, the upper class,
Breathe a different quality of air,
Inhabit a whole different stratosphere,
Feigning obliviousness and waxing philosophical
As though they don’t see what’s going on beneath them,
Marching around as if they own the place
(Which, in fact, they most likely do)
Footless, they still retain the power
To crush the little guy,
Both animal and master alike.
The stilt-men control the tamer,
For they own the clowns.
Seemingly innocent and happy-go-lucky,
As though they can eradicate your every issue
With a wink and a credit card,
Banks catch your attention with a beautiful flower,
Convince you with a painted face,
Make you laugh and jump for joy,
Then squirt water in your eye.
Water, to wet the ropes
So the acrobats keep on falling.
And last, but certainly not to be neglected,
The elephant arrives, commanding our attention.
His stature and sound steal the show.
Sporting a beautiful woman,
Unfailingly the ringmaster’s assistant,
Astride his broad back, the media never fails to show the world
Whatever will elicit the most from the crowd.
With ears like wings, he hears all,
And she hesitates not to report it to the world.
And then the show is over.
“That’s all, folks.”
“Thank you, come again.”
The elephant goes to munch his hay,
The lion returns docilely to his cage,
The acrobats secretly return to solid ground.
The circus is an ethereal spectacle,
Transitory and immune to any and all forms of stasis.
Thus, the question I pose is this, my darling mother:
Since it contains the leaders, the means, and every class,
Who’s left to hang around when the circus picks up
And leaves town?
