jim henson

I found this poem by WriteEditSeek on Authspot.com and thought it fit in well with our Carousel theme this week.  The author picks up on the surreal nature of the carousel, with  its unnaturally colored menagerie of animals that go around and around but never get anywhere.

I love the references to philosophers, authors and painters in the work.  I'd never thought of a carousel in light of Kafka's Metamorphosis, where the main character of the story wakes up to find himself turned into a  bug, but it fits.  Likewise, Van Gogh's tortured, brightly colored paintings fit here too.

There is meaning everywhere, folks!  You just have to look for it.

Enjoy the last day of August.

The Carousel

The merry-go-round twirls like an off-kilter top
Elephants, giraffes, zebras, leopards, hyenas, stallions
Galloping in syncopated rhythm
Noah's circus contained on a rotating platform
Round 'n' round they bob
Body nods to Camus, Sarte, Kirkegaard, Nietzche, Kafka
Eyes fixed autistic-like on some distant point on the curving horizon
The passing colors mixing into the blurred, tortured, psychedelic rainbow of Van Gogh's pallette
Yet the masked animals know not of the absurd
Electrical cords that feed their jerking movements
All part of a carnival designed as a centripetal masquerade