Clown Aubade
In this pale sleepless light, my brain rose,
—no— my brain is a rose—a maze of pedals
that small insects run, and everything feels
its age, it’s too late or too early and I am
a twilight of gravities and forces, a predawn
of duty, and all I can think of is the snooze button,
the putting off, the delay of all this daily decay,
the clown white caked into wrinkles, the old nose
a little less red, the worn ruffle and scuffed crimson
shoe my feet suddenly fit into. I know my other is
still in the gloom of the room, and expects me
to start this day. So why wait? Why focus on the smear
of makeup, the darkening glove, the silence,
why the near sadness, right before I declare
My Love?
J. P. Dancing Bear is editor of Verse Daily. He is the author of sixteen collections of poetry, most recently, Of Oracles and Monsters (Glass Lyre Press, 2020), and Fish Singing Foxes (Salmon Poetry, 2019). His work has appeared in hundreds of magazines and elsewhere.