Circus Act

Come one, come all,

To the greatest show around.

Bring everyone that can be found,

For this show is sure to enthrall.

Feast your eyes on that cannon,

Inside’s a man, like you, like me,

Yet-and here’s the kicker-he does not see.

In all ideas pure, and of instincts none.

Prepare yourselves, do not be startled,

he was chosen by the role of dice,

to be shot out of our most impressive device,

Initially, everything’s surely to get rattled.

KABOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At first everything was loud, rasping, and dark

I heard inside me a primitive wailing and screaming,

But when I finally opened my eyes, I saw before me streaming,

All of the earth, cold and stark.

I wept for a hand, a gesture, a sign

To indicate why I was placed in this odd journey,

With a trajectory I couldn’t follow, I flew calmly over many,

Many others, all following directions without design.

I tried to reason what it could all be about,

That I was put there to fly, to perchance feel absolute free will,

But my inability to land-despite my great desire-made that idea spill,

Into broken vessels, leaving me with nothing but the urge to shout.

If not that then what?-Was I marked to be with the doomed?

The inevitable death waiting for me at the end of my gentle flight,

Is that all I have to look forward to?-is there no way to fight?

I strain my eyes to see what- if anything-ahead loomed.

I build, erect, and conjure elaborate endings,

Outcomes which console and assuage my fear,

But it’s an illusory comfort, pushing my smile into a sardonic smear,

For I sense an arbitrariness, a triviality in my own flight’s tidings.

Yet, I cannot relinquish that hope, that expectation,

Of life, of survival, of a safe descent onto soft, embracing fields,

For I see it approaching, marking the end of my trip and all that that yields,

I close my eyes in the face of such an uncertain culmination.