Tragedy of a Clown.
Look there - tell me now
Do you see that sad clown?
She lowers herself down,
Tells the bartender her “usual - two rounds”.
She has no plans.
She has no friends.
She mutters below the somber jazz to herself,
“Yeah. This is how the day always ends.”
Head hung low in fine dining candle light
The neon circles ‘round her eyes signal she’s giving up her fight,
Her once famous inner spark is dimming - giving up its light.
Her once joyous soul ponders - trying to buy another night.
No more cars
No more shoes
No more sad, strange fights to lose.
Her tears bleed rivers of face paint down her cheeks.
“When will it all end?
This phony, sickening, saccharine grins.”
Always mocking this poor Clown from outside and within.
Honey don’t you know the clowns in the back never win?
A vision of mockery; now you’re scaring me.
Take your mirrors out onto the lawn in the morning.
Look doll - they’re on a laughing spree.
“Oh no I think they’re onto me.”
They see through her,
Now her eyes are pouring,
Tears of a Charybdis worthy stream.
No more cars
No more shoes
No more sad, strange fights to lose.
Her tears bleed rivers of face paint down her cheeks.
“When will it all end?
This phony saccharine grin.”
Always mocking this poor girl from outside and from within.
I know I told you the Clowns in the back never win.
In her drink,
Her heart starts to sink.
Oh what a sight,
I’ve never seen a Clown drunk.
This one true dichotomy,
This ‘what it is,’
And ‘what it ought to be,’
The Ringmaster takes folly in running out her luck.
Now the Clown - she stares down her rum,
And whatever that debate was - I think she knows it’s done.
In this here funhouse mirror of horrors,
With the lens of the clock,
This classic mental torture,
This Clown she became is the shock.
Now in the cave with her life’s closest vultures,
And their feathers she does caress,
She has little spirit left to muster,
For her audience and herself - a Clown’s iteration of Icarus.
And she left out that door.
I don’t think we’ll see her anymore,
At the very least not in a recognizable form.
But here we pay homage in verse of that Clown so forlorn.
What a sick fate for a Clown,
A chortle to become a chore.
And suddenly, on cue, the audience isn’t welcome anymore.
About this poem
This poem is about recognizing parts of oneself that one may not like. These pieces of personality may have always been a part of oneself, or they may have developed over time. Sometimes life and it’s circumstances force us to reinvent and become someone new; Tragedy of a Clown is about recognizing and confronting that reality.
Written on November 06, 2023
Submitted by elizabethgroth23 on November 10, 2023
- 2:24 min read
- 42 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | xaaxxbxb cccc DEEFGxhh ijiikjx DEEFGhhh llcxixix xxmnknmxkx ooxx aoo |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,288 |
Words | 482 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 4, 8, 7, 8, 8, 10, 4, 3 |
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"Tragedy of a Clown." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/175687/tragedy-of-a-clown.>.
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