A Sad Clown Remembers... Poem by Bryan Hoy

"Cause when you're gone, all the colors seem to fade..."


I'm the child who's afraid of the ghosts in his mind.
Regret and guilt are the dogs
Who claw at my hide, forever raw.
They won't let me forget, so I remember all.
Looking through the glass of a fortune ball
At the ones I've wronged in my past,
Whose screams echo out in tortured halls.

Life was too fast back then. I couldn't even pause.
My demons looked at me in awe,
When I'd go too far, get my lip busted
And thrown out of the local bar.
In my dreams the angels tried to save me,
Saw it was a lost cause so they sent me to the stage,
Where the devil bought me another round of applause

Because he knew I needed that sound
Coming out of the audience's jaws.
A day without, I'd go through withdrawals.
Cold coffee and parliaments until my love blackened.
I was coughing up tar, alienated myself
Like I was infected with SARS.

Caged in a mausoleum,
Feeding on my rage just to please them.
Tore me apart. My baby left when
I poured out my heart like Priam
Begging, "baby, it's ok, I can leave them."
She said, "Honey. You so obviously need them."

I was digging an early grave and I knew it.
Death is the illusion so I thought it was best
To plow on through it,
Delusions of a rose growing out of the ruins.

Steph, until I met you I didn't know what I was doing.
I hung you out to dry and laughed,
As the rope kept chewing your neck.
It was hard to mask but I knew what it was doing
To your cardiovascular tubing.
You were the Joan of Arc I set to the stake,
The lady's hand reaching out of the lake.
You gave me the sword but didn't see the man it could make.
I brought you to my garden
Didn't warn you of the snake
Then left you alone because you were mine to forsake.