Swinging way down in Dogtown. The Blownorama on the edge of the
clown darkness. The conmen have all flown. The sky has blown away,
leaving nothing but goosedown, sifting down, piling up in blowdrifts.

 

Blown down in Dogtown! Blond down in Dogtown! The blowmen
have swung down in cowed drifts. Clowns wear cowls and harvest
cauls. Cauling on cell phones, placing orders for puts and calls,
mauling people with celibate phones. Tall stand the drive-ins when the
blowmen come to Dogtown.

 

Clown down in Dogtown! He's been bludgeoned with a frown! Cells
chatter to each other on phones. The blowboy alone with a blowfly
watching the night blow by. All the stars have been scraped from the
sky like guano — like barnacles off a giant dark hull.

 

Mown down on the edge of town. Blown down by a clown car. The
telephone poles, a known quantity, now blow down in rows in the
hurricane winds.

 

In the midst of a sterile alkali star-waste, here's an oasis. There was
one by my house last night. An alkali star, hanging by my sister.

 

The Desert Train knocked off the tracks by the lonely earthquake.
Concentric lines radiate from the alkali wastes. Stars rain down like
down on Startown.

 

I can start a new life in Startown, under the quickstars. Quicksilverstars.
Speeding through the lonely desert roads at night, on startracks. If we
were close enough, we'd see the ancient tracks set into the roof of
the night, where the startrains cars rumble and squeak, 5 miles an hour,
each topped with a glowing, tarnished star. With that age-flecked
chthonian look of deep time and obscure, unknown builders.

 

Not a clown in the sky. The clowns of creation have now and forever
the Jester Privilege. The clowns of predation, though, predate the
clowns of creation. This is why some kids are afraid of clowns: clown
mouths wait at the end of the afterlife tunnels! Gigantic jagged teeth
snapping like cartoon sawmills — they're clown mouths.

 

The clowns have nown forever mown down the upside-downfrowns.
Clowns mopping up dissolved frowns after the circus pulls out of town.
Along with the popcorn and spilled soda and gum and ice cream cups
and wax lips and licorice whips — here and there, a soft, melting frown.
Clown 10 has a wall of souvenir frowns in his trailer. "This one," he
muses, "I picked up in Topeka, in 1922. This one...Ogallala, 1926."

 

Frown upside down in Frogtown! Frown found hanging upside down
from the underside of the sky in Frondtown! Yes, there it is — hanging
from the corner of its mouth. The half-eaten moon frowning down at
Clowntown — by the end of the night, its turned upside down, and
when it sinks behind the hills, it's a grin.