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BomberJacknut
Once upon a time,
In a world not unlike your own,
There existed a puppeteer.
He was a happy man,
And he loved to put on shows
For children who would wander by.
Using puppets he created
With his own two hands,
He would tell stories
Of the olden days,
When knights roamed
Looking for dragons to slay.
One night, he was making a new puppet
For his show the next day.
It was his proudest work,
And he was excited to show it off.
Two narrow files of houses scowl,
Blackened with grime, on either side
Of the road, and through them prowl
Strange men and women, shifty-eyed
And slinking, and a drink-shop throws
Its flare of yellow light adown
The cracked pavement. The gutter flows
A turbid, evil stream. A clown,
Drink-sodden, lurches by and sings
Obscenely. A woman trails behind
With old, bad eyes ; her clothing clings
Rain-soaked about her. No daring wind,
Light-hearted, from a garden blows
Its sweetness here from any rose.
Five circus clowns dying this year, morning newspapers
told their lives, how each one horizontal in a last
gesture of hands arranged by an undertaker, shook
thousands into convulsions of laughter from behind
rouge-red lips and powder-white face.