The Sad Clowns

Full moon night, the ring of stone is silver

Rather than its normal glow of green.

The brick-laid sidewalk leads me through the city while

Ancient stories play inside my ear.

And in the graveyard, silent and impassive

I meet my friends from childhood once again.

Their faces pallid as if bleached in moonbeams,

Lips bright red and eyes as black as coal.

My friends, the Sad Clowns, have been with me always,

They come each time my life is frayed and torn,

with nameless games and dark expressive dumbshow,

Silent music, tricks that have no name.

Their taloned fingers reach inside my very heart

and tear out every horror from my soul.

They hold them up and show me in the moonlight,

The things I never thought that I would know.

The horror of that moment always passes,

A time of horror thus brought to an end.

They melt away like shadows in the moonlight

The Sad Clowns - who have always been my friends.

The Sad Clowns come from the dark part of me. They are the parts of me that can scare people, the part that dwells on hurt, evil, darkness, depression - the shadows formed by the light from "the better angels of our nature".

You cannot have light without shadows - if you think you're doing yourself a favor by surrounding yourself only with positive, shiny-happy people then you're fooling yourself.

My best friend, who passed away last year once told me a proverb from his home country of Germany: Eine Ende mit Schreck ist viel besser dan schreck ohne ende.

"An ending with terror is much better than terror without an end."

And the job of the Sad Clowns is to force me to see where the sadness and tension was in my life. No substitute for a good therapist but good helpers anyway.

Some version of this story has been with me since I was in 4th grade, for various reasons, in various incarnation.

Someday I'll write a short song cycle about it - someday.