Pedestrian Protection

Icarus enters the restaurant with dirty shades.
It is a shady, seedy place;
hardly eponymous or agricultural.
I blow up balloons and ask him of
flight and failure and Grecian urns,
and the Manager runs out from the furnace
with stormclouds over his head
and shouts that my pay's been cut to a minimum.
Keep the casualties to a minimum, I am told.
"Icarus, let's get smoothies, before
the sun emerges, surges, then singes you."
He is a smooth talker.
He coaxes me into standing guard at the bar
--Icarus puts on his sunglass--
and bears away with the barmaiden (waitress).
I pull up the filthy blinds to watch
them go and grope and grab each other
by his car, but they pull away.
Icarus forgets his wings, so I
try them on myself, gathering
enough balloons to find the proper altitude.
I cannot fly.