Man Cub

I trudged across the campsite not meeting the jugglers' gazes,

I did not want the sympathy, did not want to feel the pity streaming from their carny eyes,

did not wander near enough to feel the whiskey soaked breath of the strongman, nor see Raffles' fingernails, no doubt as gnawed and paint-stained as ever;

his face must have looked like a mixing palette.

He and my father used to build railroads together, barking orders at the Chinamen, chewing tobacco in the Sierras,

but both their faces are mixing palettes now, one sorrow smeared and broken (I heard the clown's tears from his trailer)

the other face was smeared crimson, and mutilated (this one was my father's.)

I reached the big top and felt the familiar crunch of wood chip under boot, smelt toffee apple and shit as I lifted the flap,

and there he lay, or what remained of him,

the beer-bellied Ozymandias, his hand that mocked her, that gave her whippings and walnuts, and with heart on which she fed.

there she lay,

dressed in tu-tu and entrails, but as still as my father, and ridden with shotgun holes,

there were no winners this day.

i think, itching my moustache with claw;

why did my mother eat my father?