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.