
Image source: Unsplash.com
Tea for Two
Controlled nocturnal chaos.
Streamers painted onto charcoal skies.
Screams, squeals, shrieks pierce the void.
Neon-pink catastrophic, organ-grinding joy
spinning, twirling, lurching,
clutching the restraint bar
with a tiny left hand,
bracing for the spinning,
twirling, lurching,
that somehow hasn’t
spun us into oblivion,
spinning, twirling.
Lurching into another
seemingly random direction,
gripping momma’s arm
with a tiny right hand,
wondering how she
could possibly laugh with delight
at our pending deaths
from all the
lurching,
spinning,
twirling
into the blurred lights
as I willed my tears not to fall,
showing momma
I’m a big boy now
and could endure the
twirling,
spinning,
lurching
in stoic silence
while others my age
lost their composure and
sometimes partially-eaten
cotton-candy to the random
twurching,
spirling,
clurching
of this gigantic
many-armed neon demon,
spinning, twirling, lurching away from
our demons down the street at home
that smelled of reefer, whiskey, angry shouts,
and disquieting nocturnal thumps, inevitably
dimming to aural fragments;
haunting, lingering, lilting,
unmistakable sounds of
momma sobbing.
But she loves the teacups’
spinning, twirling, and lurching and
though I’m more of a merry-go-round
horsey-guy, well who knows how long
they’ll be down the street from us
spinning, twirling, lurching,
making kids my size sick with fear
and nauseous with motion?
All I know is
I ain’t never seen momma
crying her eyes out while
spinning, twirling, and lurching
on the teacups,
I get to show her how brave I am
lurching, twirling, and spinning,
and I get to eat cotton-candy
that’s bigger than my whole body!
That’s a pretty sweet deal.
And so I grimly endure the spinning,
twirling, lurching nonsense
as if it’s no big deal and
not the worst thing
that’s happened to us all night,
because it isn’t.
***
Lillian is hosting today’s Poetics over at dVerse. Today, we’re digging into our memories of amusement parks, carnivals, state fairs, and whatnot and so-forth.
I enjoyed this prompt, though my subject-matter might suggest otherwise. Sure it’s a melancholic memory for me, as most memories tend to be for me, but in that moment I was a small child who thought he was lifting his mother’s spirits by being brave for her. I haven’t thought of it in a very long time, and it probably would’ve remained buried if not for this timely prompt.
Feel free to drop by and also check out the other dVerse poets’ contributions to this theme.