TOBY TYLER
By David Allen
“See the elephants,
see the clowns,
see the county police
shut the circus down”
An editor once said
my story ledes
were pure poetry.
And I was on a roll
in Fort Wayne in 1986.
I was responsible for kicking
the Toby Tyler Circus out of town.
and had tons of fun doing it.
The small-time circus
was slated to set
up its tents in the city’s
Coliseum parking lot..
But the penny-pinching
pachyderm show had left
a path of collapsing bleachers
and broken bones in its wake..
“If the circus is coming to town
it better stop by an insurance office first,”
I chuckled as I wrote..
Citing lack of adequate insurance,
the city balked and the one-ring
sorry excuse for a great show
searched for a new local venue.
t finally found a farm lot
just north of the city.
“There was a bunch of midgets
putting up a tent in my backyard,”
a bewildered man who rented
a house on the property said.
The lot owner neglected to
tell him the circus was coming.
About 150 spectators saw
the opening act before police
closed the circus down.
It left town that night
So, yeah, I killed the circus,
And all the clowns, elephants,
lions, tigers, and bears.
Oh my!
NOTE: This one of three of my poems included in The Last Stanza Poetry Journal (6). It's a great quarterly anthology. Get your copy from Amazon.
Type Dancing 