The Parade of Life

 We all march at the head of a wonderful parade

of friends out of touch

notes from lovers we no longer see

friends and relatives who've died.

Everyone's parade has a few cages

of repressed feelings roaring in torment

over visions of things we desired but never sought.

Other parades feature cages of moaning feelings

mourning things we regret, or lost.

But still, no matter how many dark cages we pull in our parades

how we still love to lead them

that so few of us are willing to leave our own

and join anothers.

Who wants to be the clown

in someone else's flea-bitten circus?

Who wants to clean up after someone else's

elephant memories of a miserable childhood?

Yes, how we all love a parade.

Give us a few dead friends

a couple of doomed relationships

and we can walk the souls off our shoes

with a smile on our face

as we hurry forward in our haste,

so no one else will win the parade-of-life race.  

          ***************************************

Bill Johnson is the author of A Story is a Promise and The Spirit of Storytelling, a writing workbook. He is also the web master of storyispromise.com, a web site that explores principles of storytelling through reviews of popular movies, books and plays. Spirit is now available on Amazon Kindle, http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004V020N0.

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