Keeping All the Plates Spinning - Feb 2 2022

 

Keeping All the Plates Spinning

Feb 2 2022

There used to be a guy on TV

who kept plates on sticks

spinning in the air.

It was a high-wire act

of too many things

happening at once,

so behind the tight smile

you could see the clenched teeth

grimly fixed eyes.

And if not him

then a juggler, an acrobat

the standard magic act.

A funny man

direct from the Catskills,

a ventriloquist

and his wise-cracking dummy.

Levitating objects,

voices cast,

ladies sawed in half,

bad jokes

about a shrewish wife.

Back when we were easily entertained,

and there were just 3 channels

with something on.

Or perhaps they had seen what was up.

That in the future

we'd all be juggling madly

keeping too many plates in the air.

Pulled this way and that

until coming apart at the seams,

mouthing the words

we think will please

everyone but us.

Then one night, the Beatles came on.

Teenage girls swooned and screamed.

Respectable ladies

in cats-eye glasses and blue-rinse hair

were scandalized.

And Ed Sullivan

just seemed confused.

Time had passed him by

the future had arrived.

Life got complicated.

And you could hear the crockery smash

balls drop

jokes fall flat,

the magician's assistant

never quite get herself back

together.

Such a pretty young thing

and so subservient,

no longer willing to submit.

The poem began with the title: I read something that used this hoary cliche, and thought it would be fun to play around. After all, life often feels like this.

But how useful is a cliche that must leave most people confused? Because I'm old, yet I barely remember acts like this. And there are no variety shows like Ed Sullivan anymore. So young people must be utterly mystified by such an arcane expression.

I suppose we're more sophisticated now. Or at least more jaded. No one spins plates anymore. The magician is as likely to be a woman, and the best ones let us see how it's done. Wife jokes are politically incorrect, not to mention not funny. And they no longer juggle balls; if it's not chainsaws and burning torches, we are not entertained.