The Last Daddy-Daughter Day

When the bell rings, and the show begins,
first come the jambling clowns.
The prances and pratfalls.
Doppelgangers changing expressions,
shedding white, onion-skin-thin masks
never touching bone.

Next: the non-existent animals, too numerous to note.
Grotesque hybridity being a speciality of this show.
The bird/lion/women, the worm/cat/crows,
the smoke/man/spider/snakes
parade, ooze-crawl, perambulate.
Provoking the whip with knowing eyes.
The taming of the improbable.

Father was always your ringmaster.
Barking his dissonant, insistent opinions.
Commanding your attention.
Your solemn-ludicrous, un-sane, double-think daddy.
He taught you to see what you want to, you don’t want to, see.

You can see the myriad in each performer.
On this last day, the acts will be your endless entertainment.
Jugglers eating infernal stars on telesliding sticks.
Magicians slice-ripping space to produce a coin.
Ponies prancing on the backs of corseted women.
And still there are more.

You can see a dancer in the grease-room,
smoking amber-yellow in a long bone pipe.
Her velvet proboscis unfurls.
You can hear the skittering of claw feet, running the length
of the wooden benches where you sit.
You can smell the tang of antennae releasing spores.

Do you yearn for the main act?
You want it, you don’t want it.
To be complete.
Ended. Finished. That would be something.

Daddy turns to you and grins.
He mumbles imaginary numbers, looks for a response.
You feign interest in the program.
Read the main act, the once-in-a-lifetime appearance,
of the phantasmagorical, cosmologically, mind-bogglingly, in-ordinary
The Act to End all Acts, all worlds, all think-dream-space,
The Eater of Your Hope.
Oh, let there be an end to life’s charade.
“It should be good,” you say.

And Daddy smiles in approval.
You love him, and you hate him, and you watch the infinite show.