The circus and its acrobats will interfere,

They will provide their rides, throw out on folk ringside

Buckets of paper water

Creators of gaudy humour, outward-facing entertainment

And dressed appropriately in eye-catching raiment

Give general fare that one expects, for which one made the payment

At flat-pack kiosks set-up temporarily,

For the time the circus chooses to perform in one’s vicinity

Next disassemble kiosk, Big Top, everything, to ice-cream stand

Leave circus-shaped brown grass crop-circles where the shade has been

And to allotted towns the round go one by one

The next ever a crock of cash to which quickly to run

As bees make honey

You’ll see them on the road, their load disposed on

Sometimes several lorries

And by their colours debonair you’ll know that cavalcade

Even when found in transit advertising by parade

The coming station stop

A circus then is little more than businesses moving stock

Itinerants bringing you their staple fare

Lions and tigers and bears, the pantomime’s assortment props

And we are who go ahhh! and smile, attendant sate

Spectators, passive watchers, captive to the sportive spills

Lived-out byourseared empathies alive to what is real

Risk, difficulty, danger, braved before our eyes

The walkers on the high-rope, or the tentative trapeze

By way of qualms we estimate, account a tallied value,

Attach it to few perilous acts as zest made memory

Thescatterbrains of clowns we love the cheekiest

Of dancing acrobats commend the elegant prettiest

The hours dissolve, are flowers, fragile blooms of fragrancy

The antics of the artistes keep the latent blues away

And cause to fly, a shadow, good times imperceptibly

Diversion makes its coup de gras onmagic fripperies

                                      *

The comprehensive dreadfulness of tasted histories

Of robber band washings of hands in running blood,

Or natural calamity, or insolence and greed,

Those profligate enormities and made by us the human seed

Then ravage of disease, the infamies of monarchs

Bartered as cultured, murk the salutations of the weather,

Wrecking, not just the steeple, the full fabric of the tower -

All unbelievable!

Then armouries of defence, spent diligence that’s bent to kill,

Whilst millions upon millions scrabble for a horsehair blanket

Eat thimblefuls of rice a hungry day asextirpators junket

A universe of plenty self-sequestered to those dreadful

Performers, circus entertainers of our controversial world

The few who cue theirderivations, planand plant our values

Cause them to grow, and snow us with controls,disfigurements

Of soul and sentience; the regent revenue-stream generators

The importance of the scores, soccer, or comeuppance,

And the primacy of powers, effacement with reluctance

Sums not their yurt; a mansion, lodge, palatial

With suburb game reserves to match the tourniquet ego

A sour, and cynic clinical, and agrand assured contempt

Propones and governs growth of fortunes in the marketplace

Prepare a brand, a sweatshop product, advertising

Impute these proof to raise the roof, refrains emblazon

With big superlatives, persuade, inveigle, groom

A subject public posture ready wretched by schoolrooms

Those sedentary tombs of taste, initiative and education;

And make that fashion favoured

Yea, fake it, spin the fad-led hand-fed preyed on public’smind

Seems is the same de facto as the real thing, isn’t it?

In gold-digging, materialist and economiccrimes;

Be what you want to be is the soma-venerated rubbish of the times

Sow value, winnow revenue; what a contra-mantra!

Feed us then satellite and oligarchic sports

Soaps, handy-dandy abject values, cant’s as good as Kant

The Rolling Stones are honoured heirsto Beethoven!

Passing along, this circus leads the strung on throng

Fashioning fashions, rationing passions, tier on tier

Supplying a dish, now fowl, now fish; soups of the day

All the signs seem invisible when one’s eyes are smeared

By fabricated tears, and instigated fears,

Guildenstern Rosencrantz would play a pipe named Hamlet

Using the selfsame steers by which this

Sick illuminati market

Who talk of living flesh as one potential target

As casually as granddads eat ice-cream on Margate pier

                                  *

This paradigm of blinds designs to obfuscate the heart-rate

Which of a course would gravitate to value true things

It avenues a retinue towards adored consumption

The extreme unction book and candle of their world

These kibes to live and die for, the furore for clothes and shoes,

Gadgets, and handsets; and of these toys the latest news

Dear at the back of wide existence, humble waits a figure

The crowning Christ maintaining uncomplaining station there

Clustered too busy, expostulating in the fuss,

Believing we are on it, but having missed the bus

Broken, heart-decimated, late to age we gradually come

A clearance of the air, a fundamental harsh new broom -

Reprise our wandered eyes with devastations for our good

Dismembering us, only to shape again a clean deliverance

Ringmasters, circus tropes, the world’s commotions nought

And thankful tardy, at the last, but not bymoney, bought