5 blue balloons and superman

5 blue balloons

3 deflated

2 dilapidating

hanging on a telephone wire above some bar

i could not tell if they were sad or relieved

i didnt have the time to ask them

but i thought about them as i rode the bus

to and from my work

whilst listening to

how to manifest

and breathe

and say thank you for my heart's desires..



i went about the hour

chanting

"5 blue balloons

deflated"

inside my head

while chubby faced grace jumped and shrieked

and tony made some kind of orgasmic noise that 5 year olds know nothing of

and then i said

"sit down"

and kept repeating

"oh yes, good job"

"good job"

"yes ... yes... wow. good job"



all the while only thinking of the state of those 5 blue balloons

wondering

debating

between

"deflated"

"dilapidated"

"withered"

"resting"

and the like



and then i thought of superman

and the poem that i was going to write about him

and that day he went away

as a means of avoiding the word that i really wanted to write about 2 nights ago

or 3 years ago

when i was fuming from it

how superman wouldve been just "man" without the

"super"

how he woulda been the same as a deflated blue leotard and red cape hanging

from a

wire

how one time he gave up his "super"

to just be

"man"

and wound up drunk and deflated at a dive bar with stubble as his only friend

how he was something like

a

sad balloon without its air

knocking shots of whiskey back

how he gave up his "super"

to be "man"

for lois lane

till they both found out that

halfa why she loved him

and halfa why he'd loved himself

was because he had been such a



super



man.



but i got so

inflated today

by those 5

dilapidating

withering

balloons

up there on the wire

that all i could really think about was

that one word

thats been keeping me so high and full of hope

that one word being:



"rise"


- kim thompson. seoul. s. korea. thursday 17 feb 2011 sometime after 4pm and before 7pm