Arrived in a fever dream
Where every village in the country
Appeared to be shooting fireworks
Or attempting to bring our aircraft down

This festival, all light, explosive and tranquil
Dripping strings of color below, flower bursts above
A place where the air is already rich with scents and atmosphere
Now a country in a pyro haze perfumed with incense and gunpowder

The night hides most of the squalor as does the neighborhood
Western logos and guarded gates that keep the poor out
Unless they enter from the back in uniform to serve
Tourist bindi punctuation a rubber stamp for out of towners

There is always the work
This attempt to build a city for the day
With a consistency of detail that verges on mania
Adapting space and time to fit us

Where we have been, what we have driven through
With both acceptance and denial
Is who we are, what we do
It’s part of the reason why we do it like we do

We take the challenge and walk through
We boil with frustration and sigh with apathetic resignation sometimes
Because there are those who depend on us
To allow them to create and perform

Like a broken play on a marked field
You can see the defense fall apart before it does
Slow motion car crash sickness in the pit of your belly
We near miss drivers have steered clear so many times

Some see the the game unfolding and pull the cord
Disbelief replaced by some deeper program
Fight or flight
Some shitty field becomes the Alamo

Survivors we are, broken in ways you’ll never see
The show must go on, onward, outbound, endless
The sun rises twice and we squint
Gallows humor at it’s best

We wanted more, to make it work, again
And we will
But you can’t fist fight an ocean
And running away never hurt so much
Because it might have been the right thing to do
And that always hurts more than what we know.