The Ride

A memory

A pile of planks, six stories tall
Warped wood absorbing rains and winds
Groaning silently, slouching on itself
Leaning inward in tired defeat
Time has rendered its loss complete
And now its ghostly
As Chernobyl

A stray shoe left on a carousel
Purgatory, for the praxis of quietus
In the distance, the din of the thrill
A shrill shriek of panic
Shock, at confronting the face of death
Of a straining chain, in the past
A rickety click-clack
A rattletrack cackling as the chain cranks
And hoists the weight of
Twenty souls skyward

Plastic cracking and straining
Broken molds and joists complaining
Sullen joints and tired timbers settling
Tolerances loose
The play
and leeway
adding to the fun
Our ride sounds like it’s breaking on the run

Every twist, a bit more slipped
Away from our path
The intimacy
Of gravity
Pressing hips together at each turn

Each shift bleeding a jot more impulse
From a runaway train
Whose passengers seek
A whisper of death
Across their breath

Nought to stop your fall
But a lap bar that may catch
A knee, before you tumble free
To strike the ground, on your broken crown

At most a harness
Compressed against a chest
Fighting to swallow air
While tempting fate

With wild, banshee screams
Delighting in the scare
As much for the dare
As a possibility of injury
Or a brush with mortality

Down another fall, so the train won’t stall
To keep the kinetic momentum
From our initial plunge
To tease a little more speed
For a few final thrills

Before the compressed air hisses
And the clamps tighten
The vice that cements us back in reality
And arrests death, for a time

Then we’re right back where we started
None too soon, a few scares wise
Our invitation to the thrills of simulated demise
Having completed its tour
Wobbly legs planted firmly on the platform

A barbarian horde, thumping its chest
Defiant, of the end it came to spy
With its own eyes
And having rode to war, ready to decamp
Once more

To the confines of the nearby eatery
For cardboard pizzas and pre-packaged frippery
At the nearby stall
And a novelty, to recall
The epic quest to conquer fear
With laugh and cheer

Great hearty gladness, at our triumph
The roar, both defiant and mechanical
Gone now
A shade of the past

And the joy that haunts it
Mere memory
Ghosts of your own voice
Calling you back to the past
Where you cheated death

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