Crab-Angel

             An atomic sprite

perched on a polished

             monster-stallion

reigns over Ringling’s      revolving

trinity   of circus attractions

Something the contour

of a captured crab

waving its useless pearly claws

From a squat body

pigmy arms

and bow legs

with their baroque calves

curve in a bi-circular attitude

to a ballerina’s exstacy

An effigy of Christmas Eves

smile-cast among chrysanthemum curls

it seems a sugar angel

while from a rose flecked ruff of gauze

its manly legs

stamp   on the vast rump of the horse

An iridescent speck

dripped from a rainbow

onto an ebony cloud

Crab-Angel      I christen you

minnikin of masquerade sex

Helen of Lilliput?

Hercules in a powder puff?

SONG

“Had you been born

in regions of the Unicorn

To balance on his ivory horn

perhaps — — —”

“Per Bacco!      ’Tis an idiot dwarf

hooked to a wire to make him jump”

Automaton bare-back rider

the circus-master

jerks

your invisible pendulence

from an over-head pulley

to your illusory

leaps in up-a-loft

signs

the horse

racing the orchestra

in rushing show

throw

his whimsy wire-hung dominator

to dart

through circus skies of arc-lit dust

Crab-Angel      like a swimming star

clutching the tail-end of the Chimera

An aerial acrobat

floats on the coiling lightning

of the whirligig

lifts

to the elated symmetry of Flight — — —

A startled rose

whirls in the chaos of the hoofs

The jeering jangling

jazz

crashes to silence

The dwarf—

subsides like an ironic sigh

to the soft earth

and ploughs

his bow-legged way

laboriously      towards the exit

waving a yellow farewell with his perruque