Death of the Clown | Teen Ink

Death of the Clown

August 21, 2010
By Matt38 GOLD, Warwick, Rhode Island
Matt38 GOLD, Warwick, Rhode Island
11 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Sailor’s starlight.
Constellations dip reflections in water.
Thin clouds blown from a pipe.
A nursery rhyme puts the sun to sleep.
Lost out there, somewhere,
Sit on the starboard and
Look at the stars, bored.
Stand on the bow and bow.
From the aft,
I think a clown may have laughed.
Or no, maybe he just left.
Circus in the sea.
Sea in the circus.
Then gravity, the juggler of worlds.
A clown ignored
Is a man overboard.
Where sharks feast
On the red nose
That they confuse for blood.
And the clown’s frown is worn down
By the fictitious friction of the half-love
That brought him here to be eaten alive.
Or maybe it was love that consumed him.
Threw him to the open water as dead meat,
Nothing more than a shell to be cracked.
All seen by nightlight.
As you are the light of the moon.
I Crawl through your ears and look through your eyes.
A creepy concept never dies.
Face-paint fading.
White and blue,
Pink and purple,
Yellow too.
Violet feet
Are the first they eat.
And my clown is tickled
By predetarians nose
As he tears open polka-dot pants.
Shredded clothing makes like confetti
And dances in to depths of darkness.
Colorful decent of the societal must.
And the weight of the water turns them to dust.
And the dust of his shirt appears as stars
To underlings.
Sailor beware,
Approach if you dare.
A naked clown in moonbeam spotlight.
And I, as less than useful, hum.
Water wolves tear at skin.
Feel’s good to never win.
Scratches down my back
As traceable love lines.
A mirror of death that instead screams passion.
I feel them with my memory,
As a scream from six feet under
Reminds me of life before death.
Or was it after?
And laughter.
And so I laugh in the face of defeat.
Glass emotions shatter
And fail to matter
In the heat of time.
Thus refusal of remorse
For the death of a clown.
As Great White Sharks
Thus drag him down.
Skin removed, like clothes confetti.
Drag me back to you already.
For clown is I, with hope I die.
To prey, not pray, on this divide.
Truth be tolled at junction pass,
Truth be told by bashful bass,
Whose story born from flickered thought,
Tells of face-paint man
And broken watch.
The hands at five and seven
Seemed to frown,
So even when he smiled
One of his faces always refused happiness.
And how the last to go was his beating heart,
Which, before the beasts could eat,
Was stolen by a hope.
And how the last his eyes could see
Was a rippling surface
Built from stars.
And the thought that
If he could emerge from submersion
He may be enveloped in space.
And instead of suspension in water
He would float through galaxies.
Oh, what a death, among the stars.
Between the Earth, the moon, and mars.
Nonsense thoughts you shouldn’t know,
About the troubled boat I row.
Life is fast, I wish it slow.
Time’s an advantageous foe.
A clown that dies, just to show,
How it feels to watch you go.

The author's comments:
I wrote this for a girl when she left me for college. Maybe if the words are strong enough they'll serve as an echo in her heart and when she comes back to her home she'll come back to me as well. Tough chance.

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