Tuesday's Poem

funny how those astronauts couldn't wait to get back

home. Home. Home on the strange. Back here where

the beer and the climate change play. Back here where

God’s COUNTY FAIR never shutters for any season.

Lookit down the midway for an eyeful of attractions

essentially unchanged since the cutting of the ribbon.

Current iterations include a red-capped barker barking

step right up for a chance at the game, the greatest game

the world has ever known! Once upon a time we believed

in the game. But the mad barker’s gig is rigged and we

swear we won’t be fooled again. But we probably will.

🌎

The once Bearded Lady has now gone clavicularly smooth

except for tiny facial bone cracks—places where the meth

gets out. It’s sad to see but face it, impossible to look away.

But don’t you worry, all is not phantasmagoric. Hey, listen,

do you hear that? That’s the soothingly 70s sounds of one

Labi Siffre. C’mon, who doesn’t love a good comeback story,

right? Bless the Lord and the telephone. And look there,

standing by the House of Mirrors is that Ann with no e—

the writer who owns the shop where the muses live. Her

new novel snorts this fall. There’s a reason to keep getting up.

🌎

Funny how those astronauts reminded us what’s down here—

the good, the bad, the fugly. All down here for the taking, the

making, the shaking and the baking. Home—the only one we’ve

got and we’re all a COUNTY FAIR family, best dance with them

that brung ya. Yes, all of them. If we only had the eyes to see.

Maybe every so often it’s good to spend alabaster money to send

an eight-eyed silver goddess far to the dark side of darkness

to send back the light, a rouse-awake to our far-country senses

at how prodigally dulled we’ve grown. Get up and make straight

for the gate. Remember, admission is free. Come back home.