Even Those Who Run Away With The Circus Can't Smoke In The Stacks

Because I'm sitting in the library
trying to silence
tapping toes that sound like
rhythmically gifted elephants
who'd give even Gene Kelly 
a run for his money in the rain.
Because I should be breathing in
the kiss of this spring corona
instead of storm-clouding over
course projects about writers
whose names I've let slip, forgotten
whose fruit I've let ripen, squeezed
every last drop of juice
from their literary acrobatics.
Because all I see are trapeze artists
forming human helixes and smoke trails
written over air, inked, feigning
death, punctuated at the last
second by the connection of hand
to handle as quick as a synapse.
Because we are all just holding on
to the claims of some ring-leader
under a big top trying desperately
to stamp out the ever tapping,
tapping realization:
it isn't only monkeys and elephants
who perform for mere peanuts.
Because I really should have
skipped town with the clowns
on the last train car, painting
sanguine lips over homeless
frowns, fine brushing deep blue
tear-drops under eyes too porous
to do anything but laugh
at the roid-raging strong-man
blotting warm salt from his eyes
whimpering himself to sleep about
hypodermically tapping his vein
tomorrow and his trypanophobia
tonight. Because the tap
dancing bear and the ticket
holding businessman are separated
only by the bars of a cage, and
no one can seem to remember who
it was meant to keep safe. Because
A man with a pen is no different than
one with a megaphone. Both selling
a refrain, a salvation titled
the greatest show on earth.
Because I should have given away
my tall leather boots, put down the lion
baying leather whip.
Because even without the red and yellow
canvas above I’ll always be underneath
the tangerine sunset dripping warm
citrus into the squinting eye of the boy
blazing cigarette chains
blowing rings
the size of circus tents.