Triptych

Dancing in the Streets

A formal-dressed couple danced in the middle of a romantic European street under a soft rain shower. A Studebaker taxi waited with it's passenger door open and the meter running. They were an elegant couple, tailored and starched- heirloom  jewelry flashed in the taxi's headlights. The sleepy taxi driver leaned out his window, his chin on his forearm and watched his fares glide across puddles. At 4 a.m. the dancers claimed the city and everything in it as their own. Her designer gown’s hem swished above the pavement like brushes on a snare drum as his handmade shoes kept perfect time. They waltzed weightless up and down the avenue. 

They were in love. They were going to be married later that same day and were partying the night away in celebration. The taxi driver lit a crooked, brown cigarette and glanced at his fare meter, it showed an impressive sum. The driver just shrugged and turned his head to watch the dancers gracefully dip and turn, back and forth in front of his taxi’s headlamps. Dawn lighted the sky but hadn't yet revealed itself. The couple smiled at each other, holding fading stars captive in their eyes. Building facades gradually emerged from the night darkness and were mirrored in puddles cupped on the street’s uneven cobbled surface. They say love is beautiful. They say love is blind. A festive parade with floats and large helium balloons was starting to amass up the street. It’s long dragon tail of color and music would eventually push the dancers aside, confining them to impatiently wait for it’s passing, hostage in the back of the taxi before beginning their new future.

Pagliacci Down

A six-year-old in a Pagliacci clown suit clung to a square wood post, half unconscious. He had lost his puff tipped hat in the parade melee and now leaned tight into the vertical security of the post. His posture let the gauzy folds of his costume collect the parade’s dusty aftermath. Middle-aged men in white short-sleeve shirts and tan pants sat on barricades across the street but payed no attention to the lone child. A brigade of silver saddled, palomino ponies had left behind them a trail of rounded droppings. A precision team of baton twirlers had shed snake-skin spangles off their skin-tight costumes. The last brass echoes from marching bands died away and the usual city noise started to creep back into the street. 

The child Pagliacci kept his body anchored to the wood post with his eyes mashed closed. He silently recited small prayers focused elsewhere. The raucous idling of an old 1950 Plymouth sedan with a hole in it’s muffler, coughed protest half a block away. A transistor radio on the sill of an 2nd floor apartment window above a tailor shop blared a jumpy Tarantella. The sidewalks were crumbling. A sewer rat gnawed on a piece of carmel earlier thrown at the crowd from a parade float littered with alcoholic clowns. 

The abandoned child's small fingers dug into the post, raising splinters under his fingernails. The locals continued to ignore his presence. Neither did anyone notice the asphalt street slowly turning into a river. The child was dreaming, desperately clinging to reality. Somewhere, possibly down a nearby alley, someone started laughing, then the laughter turned into crying, sobbing, wailing. The tips of the child's shoes hung over the edge of the curbing as flowing water rose to lap at their patent leather soles. Things started to change rapidly. The parade only lasted an hour, but the boy’s dream lasted an eternity. 

Panda Gods

Two gargantuan, conjoined panda's the size of Thanksgiving Day parade balloons, shot rainbow streaked laser-rays from their frazzled muzzles. They had materialized amongst the other parade balloons using them as disguise. Blinding polychrome rays spread from their mouths, streaked across the sky where translucent, plasma-electric colors began to transform into thick, gooey syrup that glaze-coated everything below, flooding the streets of the city with a noxious liquid. The panda's were angry. They were once worshiped by all living beings as gods- ancient and terrible deities that commanded even the earth and sky to do their bidding. Now, in modern times they were barely considered side show attractions. Not much more than floating billboards to hang advertisement on. The bloated and debauched panda immortals released their horrid, pent-up anger upon the earth and all it's creatures. The twin deities especially wanted to punish man- the least pious of earth-shackled animals.