April 2, 2020

Balloon Payment

It looms on the horizon, leering, casting a deep
shadow, like a Macy's Thanksgiving Day
parade number, but changed, darkened now in
the hands of a mad – and oversized – puppeteer.

The Joker, perhaps. Yes, the Joker.  He
commands the thing, and us, steers the thing,
and us, mocking the diligence with which we
plod toward it. We are faithful, and yet . . .

He knows we have pledged our fidelity
to the wrong things. He knows we have
mortgaged our lives to a bunch of hot air,
if you can call it air at all, all that helium.

He knows, nihilist that he is, that it is not
release that awaits us at the end of all our
misdirected plodding, not release but collapse.
So he waits, hissing slowly, to swallow us whole.