Stealing Circus Hours - Nocturne Poem by Warren Falcon

And I was desolate and sick of an old passion - Ernest Dowson

It's got to do with America,
my love of music, my grotesque loneliness... - Henry Miller


I, Twitter, stutteringly remember in cyber chases

late-night sittings at blue screen scrabbling after

old grievances such are lovers, cheaters, jilts, and

those rare 'got-lucky' graces, unexpected shoulders

and shudders, when I finally broke open laid waste

for future flatterers and failures of heart.


Are not all summer nights born late in America

fading when morning glories fog draped at dawn

breach fairgrounds an entire continent long?


Pine perimeters encircle veiled hermetic tents.

Suspended rides now frighten.

Briefly carnies are relieved of their ugliness.


Cotton candy gins spin dry confections to cold crystal.

Sugared metals stick/stop, their precocious tongues

tuned too early for erasure.


Sniffing my fingers in revenant tents I recall

sickened the candy at every fair, handfuls gorged,

glutted, belly sore and wanting more, drowned

in the push-shove of fevered bodies intent on the

fast rides where one loses stomach for the ordinary.


Dizzy, I grab my ankles, confess instead,

I've puked my guts from excess, spun sugar

failing cart wheels chasing penny mechanical

distractions ghosting up Stillborn* nights

holding their breath well past bedtime.


At a window, counting railroad cars,

a boy thief sits, stealing circus hours.


*Stillborn Falls is the town the imaginary poet was born in.