Human Carnival

Human Carnival 

The carnival was asleep

It had been for years
A stiff frozen Big Top
Unused gelato machines
Fading in streams of color
Like a crying watercolor painting

Falling asleep on the Ferris Wheel 
Was never my intention
It had been standing still
In the heart of the abandoned circus town

We travelled through it 
Like cells of life 
Permeating 
A ghostly forgotten world 

Our eyes twinkling with the wind and stars
Our feet living inside our boots
Stepping over
Clotted patches of dirt

And then we began to climb upwards
To the stars 
Reaching to the sky 
I climbed high enough 
Trying to brush up against the ink black sky
Fireflies dancing in circles 
The moon's craters smiling to me 
In the most genuine kind of smiles
The lopsided and distorted kind

And we climbed upwards
In the frozen ferris wheel
We climbed like ants
We crawled through its spokes 
Like we were suspended in a giant bicycle wheel 
We climbed into faded pastel carts
In our tiredness 
We fell into them 
Our thoughts suspended
Like the sky's stars
Hanging in the sky
Resting 

We were in the most abandoned place
Yet we were breathing life into it 

And then 
The ferris wheel began to turn 

Even the most abandoned places
Even the most ghostly 
Can be awoken 

By life

And with that 
The Ferris Wheel began to turn 
Joining the earth in its motion

And we each fell asleep 
All of us
In our own faded pastel carts
Separate but connected
Turning with the world 

Like a lullaby
Gently being rocked to sleep 
By the Earth
Under the midnight sky 
Earthlings, all as one
 

 ~ JL