Clown

Maybe I'll be a clown. A smelly old clown. Not bad smelly though. Maybe I'll be the clown that begs for change on the street, but I won't BEG, I'll simply suggest. And I'll smell wonderful. I haven't decided whether I'll smell like food or flowers. Maybe I'll smell like meatloaf and petunias, but why stop there? I could also smell like the linen table cloth, freshly washed. And I'd smell like the silverware, and the lemon fresh dish soap used to wash the silverware. And I'd smell like the heat of the water used to kill the germs on the silverware. Really, I'd smell like an entire dinner. Like all the people in the restaurant. I'd smell like the German Boutique owner on his first date since his wife divorced him last year. I'd smell like a waiter's pants, which smell like the waiter's St. Bernard. I'd be a clown that smells like the struggle in people's throats not to sob openly. I'd be the scent of shirked cowardice. I'd be arthritic pains hidden for years so as to keep working to put my last child through college. People would pass me and be reminded of these things, they'd stop momentarily and smell a hamburger, or a basket of rose petals, or their own saliva on the neck of a former lover, or the world series, or trampled grass and goose shit, orange rinds, the sea's salt, a burnt hot dog, mothballs. They would stop, and then I'd kindly suggest a donation. Maybe you could spare some change? And they'd see my face, painted into a permanent smile, and they'd see my clothes, silky and multicolored, and they'd smell me and be reminded of something they never thought they forgot. People would give money to this sort of clown don't you think?