To please the crowd. To make 'em laugh. To make 'em cry.
To ask yourself -- "Why?"

"Any Requests" took its first bow in the back room of a Chicago tavern known as "Woody's". It was part of a performance piece put on by the Chicago Poetry Ensemble, a troupe of poets who assembled religiously every Monday night at the Get Me High Jazz Club -- "the den of the ill-bred poets" hugging the tracks in a Near West Side neighborhood called Bucktown. We dubbed the show "Circus Chatter." In it, I enter as a transient clown arriving at my tent, suitcase in hand, ready to perform yet another night's antics. I sit down at my make-up table, smear cream on my face and, after portraying several "city ... circus" characters, find myself alone in the center ring, a sinister white-faced outsider stuck in the exposure of a hot spot. I remove my top hat, set it down on the sawdust, and ask:

Do you wish to make a request?
Why not
Request that I hang myself upside down
On a tight wire trapeze
Suspended by the knees?
That I Spin myself around and around
In an ever-widening gyre?

Bristles on my fingertips!
A red sable brush in my mouth!
An artist at the edge of an ever-changing universe
Marking each lap of his dangling gyration
With a jittery brush stroke smear
Poking ... jabbing ... stretching
The highly elastic fabric
Of his brutal imagination.

Is that enough?
Is it enough to be just part of the arena?
A clown, a father, a popcorn go-getter?
An impatient grandmother, a tattoo man,
The trainer of bulky gray elephants
Swaying this way and that
Moving
Through the shadows
Of Everyman's town!

LADIES and GENTLEMEN! Boys and girls!
It is my extreme pleasure to present to you
The analytical manifestation of a thousand thousand
Unrelated dreams
From a hundred hundred
Isolated towns
Under a billion trillion
Dazzling stars.
A universe ... grinning ...
Like an enormous pock-marked face,
A shadow on the street corner

Ladies and Gentlemen! Ladies and Gentlemen!
Before we line you up for your nightmare march
Through our painted panoramic arena, LET'S ASK!
Are there any requests?
Are there any last requests
Before the lights go dim

And the whistling steam begins to play?

Make a request!
Request that the artist fly without a net
And never miss the bar.
Or miss perhaps!
Depending on your seat, the price of your clothes,
The position you hold in regard to truth and beauty.

Ladies and Gentlemen! Ladies and Gentlemen!
WATCH!

As the next performer takes the scaffold ...

The Ringmaster cracks his whip!

Calliope steams!

The black and blue red-faced clowns hail a laugh!

Ladies and Gentlemen! Ladies and Gentlemen!

Ladies and Gentlemen ....