At the people’s fair, the poets and priests applauded,
amid moon beams, day flowers and drifting bubbles,
they chanted om-ish dreams in wiling away the hours.
For days on days, the fleet of foot and spare of change
smoked sense into surreal, eating praise and crackers
like Jamesian daisies and a Dapper dangling a cheroot.
There were criers, circus barkers among lap dogs afoot
staring down cookie crumbs, brie chunks on sooty floor.
Festive and feast-ive, the colors and chaos crept edgily,
spun the words from the loudspeaker on love, language,
power, God, emptiness, blunting, alienation and forgive
me if I recollect badly for such forceful good cheer stung
my fear-filled hidden face, feted, feeling the drafty ales
culled by court jesters and juggling clowns reciting lines,
preached poetry and rhyming prayers to a cloying crowd.
And the arms reached me, slung their shawl-like shroud
over me who did not remember how she came here to be
fair of people, puppets, poets, perfume, priests and pot
when then I recalled a choice collected as entry gate fee:
Lithely spin inside the tales of others’ telling or turn tail.
So, in a booted click-thud pivot, I chanced the lone trail
beyond fenced cloudy star-lit trees blinking cheer-ishly
and down the hill atop which the cacaphony decrescendo
subsided wide for miles stretched into the nomadic night.
In the gaze of the other 