I want to say a built you a Circus
to get your attention;
but the truth is,
you would have noticed
if I’d hammered a single tent peg;
you’re busy,
but you see.
If I were a slightly better liar,
I would say I built a Circus
as the barest token of my esteem,
that I could not think of a way of telling you I liked you
unless I could say it with a dozen brass bands, under
some vast balleyhoo of a giant tent.
The truth is,
this is your circus,
and these are your monkeys
(except Herman; Herman doen’t
play well with others, and I’m
training him to be a bartender/assassin;
I’ll introduce you once I’m 100% certain
he knows the difference.
Some lovers would send a single
perfect
rose,
others,
a map of the heart,
drawn with disciplined rhyme.
I am simply fleshing out some of your ideas,
tearing them out of Perhaps and into IT IS,
and powering it with the collective gasp
of a thousand chests
watching the trapeze-artist
(apparently)
miss her swing, and–
Why not come in?
The elephants ate the caviar,
the roustabouts drank
the elderberry wine,
but I have popcorn,
and whiskey,
and the Greatest Show I could ever
lay at your feet.
