Drama Under The Circus Tent...Excerpt #2

Dosage

Origins Part II: Mutations…
Was Abby-normal becoming a young freak?
Worried she would turn into a hairy beast
Perhaps, she'd one day grow an orange beak.

Would her paranoia cause her to leak?
Become that person she loved the least.
Was Abby-normal becoming a young freak?

She scavenged for a cure, a little sneak.
As young fur spread, a surprising feast.
Perhaps, one day she'd grow an orange beak.

And fly away to a sunny Martinique.
To forget her dad's slow lecture on yeast
Was Abby-normal becoming a young freak?

Or ascending barefoot the highest peaks,
The air so thin it seemed as if she'd cease.
Perhaps one day she'd grow an orange beak.

She sensed she was much more than merely geek
In her future dreams, there wasn't any peace.
Was Abby-normal becoming a young freak?
Perhaps, one day she'd grow an orange beak.

Coping

When the pharmacist lost his only wife
He thought of eating salads of colored drugs
Because his daughter knew where he hid his knife
Why had his mind become tiny like a bug?
Not a physicist or mathematician, wizard
Maybe his affair was with a magic rug.
And wished he stuck out tongues like a lizard
Or was fried pulling out his sockets plug

Abby-normal spread out her massive arms
To hug her weary father's chemical disgrace
Only the great cement mixer spoon calmed
A face stomped upon by apoplexy
Would there be another love that felt like lace?
He cut toes with scissors and healed with balm.

As if it never happened…

The next day she would be forced to return to school
And avoid the prying eyes of her judging peers
She'd have to quickly learn how to play the fool.

She was too old to hide behind the monkey bars
Could she leap inside her favorite ancient stories
Like the melancholy clown stuck in tiny cars

Her life seemed like one a long word problem
Was she chosen to peel away their veneer?
Solving if she could only tear apart the stem.

In history, she took out her composition book
America's story would say what she could not
Her father was not an adulterous crook.

He'd love her even if she was a wild thing
Without the aid of camouflage's secret shroud
Would nets catch her if she flew off
The swing?

The Correct Dosage?

It seemed her dad was heretical
When it came to swallowing chemicals.
When his eyes began to glaze over
It was best to just roll him over
And make sure he drank some water
Before his mind went to slaughter.

She tried to be a helpful daughter
Before adolescence had caught her
Yet here she was forced to be both
Mother and child as if they both
Had been blown from their mild life
Not realizing what caused their strife.

She squeezed black rags over his head
And pulled him from now soaked beds
Waking him with smelling salts power
And she then dragged him to showers.
What could she conjure to provide his cure?
She'd use a fishing rod and a lure,

To catch what they needed to find with hoe
Maybe, sell snake oil, put on a show
To make them forget their troubles
Until they stopped seeing doubles
What was on her little chin, some stubble?
She did not even want to know…

Micah Zevin 2007...

Drama Under The Circus Tent!!??( novel in verse in progress)

Dosage

Before the Lights Part I:
Once she was normal
Then she was Abby-normal
She used to do cart wheels
And flips in the park by
Her father the pharmacist
He'd hand men a pill which
Would remove their cyst.
Before the hair invaded
She didn't suffer melancholia
Just traded it in for paranoia
She didn't raise her loving fist
Until she passed the sixth grade
Daddy said it was the fault of
Chemicals molding her clay
For the rest of her life he forbade
Violence's shrinking head near
His home unless no night or day
Persisted anymore to sway.
We are humans, not swinging
From ropes like circus performers
We should all have hearts of mourners
She knew if this hair made her insane
God knows what would be her refrain
So she shaved off her hair each day
Sneaking home from school a different
Way.

On a Tight Rope…
Momma was cheating on Daddy with the
Refrigerator repairman
She shouted for the whole town to hear,
You're not a real man.
The child she smirked is not even mine
Do you think dear husband I crossed a line?
You must have had some tawdry affair
Your little freakish brat I did not bare.
She stared at her father with muted eyes
He responded with sadness deep
It appeared he might take a leap.
Instead, He snarled a quip.
Look honey bunch, she has your lip.
If you try to scar her with your nomadic fever
I will take to with a clever
Just because you are losing your marbles
Do not dare scar your child
Whatever I have done she has done no harm.
There, there, husband her lies your charms
You are a martyr's disgrace
Hidden behind a younger face
At least I try to repair what has not been fixed,
He said; I don't get up and quit.
At this she laughed hiding a sniffles guilty sound
The repairman's car door was open
Is was time to cross the bridge Daddy made her turn around
He did not want her to stare at the lostWhat he had never found.

Origins Part I: A Betrayal?
Abby-normal ran home fast
She hoped her tears would last
Her mother had become another
Monster freak show demon housewife?

She hoped her tears would last
Memories might erode like the beach
Monster freak demon housewife?
Would dad burn her photographs?

Memories might erode like the beach
He'd say, this was never your mother
Just an elitist boutique store clerk
In search of quick aphrodisiac fixes

He locked the pictures in his diary,
His love was touched by addiction
In search of quick aphrodisiac fixes
To hallucinate a reality of choice

His love was touched by addiction
Or branded by a fetishistic affliction?
He'd always been curious of alternatives
Changing colors like dye in a quilt

He'd always been curious of alternatives
Her mother had become another's lust
Changing colors like dye in a quilt
So Abby-normal ran home fast.

Part 1 with more to come of my novel in verse in progress. Look out for what comes next in the Drama Under the Circus Tent. Has anyone taken the correct dosage here?

Micah Zevin 2007

Between a Nightmare and a Dream

Pillows and Knives

Are the feathers from pillows bringing him down?
He treaded over hot coals with the softest frown

With the crickets insistent dialogue he’d begin to sneeze
His tears were emasculated by the tentative breeze

He liked to climb to tops of tents and reflect on Northern Stars
Wouldn’t be better off if he really came from Mars?

Why does he assume his anger is wrong?
Brewing beneath surface fumes among the angry throngs

When he sharpened his favorite knives
He’d wondered how he should live out one of his nine lives

Would majesty spring forth as the bees were creating honey in the hives
Droning on and on to a queen who dominated their lives

He said he would disregard the noise and watch out for spies
Until you have no use for my watchful eyes

Late at night he could not sleep so he chopped some vegetables
And wondered why routine business trips could be so illegible

Sometimes it felt as if life was an inconsequential comedy sketch
He heard comedy was hard but could it make you wretch

If he could magically write a masterpiece
He’d revise spring and make it his new disgrace

He met a guy at a workshop who called him a writing schizoid
He told him it’s just a character so don’t be so paranoid

No, he said, I mean cut through the crap
Get to the prime meat, sharpen our senses with a fitful slap

Micah Zevin 2007

A Bearded Lady Dreams?...

Selected Memories, or Storytelling...

I am trying to stink up something to right
Was the lion tamer kidnapped in the night?

You have been wronged by many a dirty sponge
If there is treasure before you, why don't you lunge?

In a dream, you have a drink with your writer friends
You tire of their babble, their triteness offends

Yet they were transparent or never really present
They did not have the beauty of a mumbling pheasant,

The circus strong man's most favored companion
What inspired him to become a vegetarian

Only the circus librarian had no one to love
Cloistered in his bibliotheque frowning from above

Where were the "Bearded Lady's" famed talking doves
She'd open her hands and they'd fly off her gloves

Each time one could see tears in her eyes
Her faces carried the weariness of many surviving lies

At the end of her act, she lost her repose
Heaving at the audience a bag of clown noses

Now everyone looked like the clown she hated
She used to love him when he'd been caught and baited

She dreamt that she had died on top of big red feet
or had been visited by a troop of ghostly sheets

The "Bearded Lady" thought of her blind father
She wanted to erase all that had faltered...

Micah Zevin 2007
...Stories from the circus tent

A Secretary's Song...

"The Lullaby"

Does this foundation rest on jewels
or, the malevolence of mules?
She believes everything will crumble
until she follows all the rules

Her moods disorder her hanging clothes
She's too tired to re-organize
Are there cobwebs in her large eyes?
Does she know if she can even speak in prose?

When will here prince disarming
come to bring deserved spoils?
She needs stabilities cement
to erase these burning boils

Each morning she wakes for work
to be screamed at by another jerk
Each day ending, she hopes could begin again
Then she'd laser away those callous smirks

She will not wait for foreboding days
to bring out of hiding her melancholy lear
at the planning she could of done to
stop those many headlighted deers

She should go swiftly to the church
where trusted gospel of childhood lurks?
She prays to escape the minds rack
and find her own graceful perch

Where there will be no reason on tap
to twitter at paper pile dismay
only incubate drama's malleable farce
and filter the blackbird hovering by her lap

She'd rise dripping as if from a nightmare
wondering why she'd become so scared
Could she propel curtains to open and close
and heave the rickety cradle down those neverending stairs...

Micah Zevin 20o7
Don't forget Secretary's day my ceo friends...or it might be your end!
Send me your secretary songs?