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THE DRUNK ON THE HIGH WIRE


My parents sold me to pay their taxes.
Now I teeter a hundred feet from my death,
On this narrow strand I call my home.
Yet it’s only my lack of nerve which waxes
This wire upon which I balance each breath.
Someday, I’ll fall like Saigon, like Rome,
Which is why my spinal cord never relaxes.

I’m the drunk you see on the high wire
With this balance beam which I use to fix
The planet beneath me. Full of rum
And steady as a hieroglyph,
I walk this length as a shrill wind picks
My flesh to shreds and leaves me numb.
Won’t you toss me up another fifth?

REFRAIN:
Above the crowd, I slide like a fox
Through a henhouse,
like a breeze through a tomb.
This high wire is the only path
I’ve known, since before I left the womb.
Deprived of safety net and bath,
As blind and confused as Oedipus Rex,
I inch my way from magic to math,
Trying not to look down at my doom,
As at my feet a downdraft sucks.

Sometimes I wonder how I’ve come
Into this hazard, by what hoax
Was I led into peril of life and tooth?
Below me I study your streets I’d roam,
If I could escape this distance which strokes me,
Numbs me like a fine vermouth.
Below, I can hear my destiny hum.


Words and music by Galen Green c 1986


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