Tags
Amusement Park, Free Form, Joyland, Laurence Hobgood, Poem, Poet Laureate, Poetry, Robert Pinsky, Rollercoaster
I took a day a couple of weeks ago to drive around McKenzie Park, a place I had only been to once for the purposes of seeing a show at the Wells Fargo Amphitheater. I came across Joyland, the local amusement park, which was closed at the time and seemed to be under some maintenance. It was obvious that the place would open up again soon, but this hulking, gaudy, yet deserted would-be paradise sitting in the middle of a scrubby old park was too picturesque a thing to pass up. So I snapped some photos and decided to write a little poetry about it. The notes at the bottom were jotted down that day, but this “final” (so far) piece came to me after watching Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky perform with jazz pianist Laurence Hobgood at Texas Tech, a moving and fascinating hour of written word and improvised music conversing with each other. “A Still Rollercoaster” ain’t Pinsky, to be sure, but sometimes when you have a brush with the greats you just have to go home and write.
“A Still Rollercoaster” – SECOND TRY
It’s a dreadful sight
A postcard to heartbreak
Looming up out of the scrubby brush and cracked tarmac
Stretching helplessly out for the fluffy disguise of an overcast sky
Empty and cavernous, quiet and deep, preserved but forgotten.
The golden age is well and truly gone.
The sun glimmers on chipped paint and rusted bolts
The night will no longer be held back by bright lights
The symphonious screams of joy and pleasure that gave this place breath
Have been trapped in the tattered fabrics of the merry-go-round
Have been smothered under the weight of absence
Unlike the onetime cherry reds and sky blues and sunny yellows
The clowning and cavorting characters
And the mazy frames of steel and iron –
They are cursed to linger, to fade, and to watch
As the ecstasy they once invited moves elsewhere
From the palatial adventures of the outdoors
To the private expeditions of a darkened living room.
The crown prince of this forgotten kingdom
Is a lone cart perched at the top of a bucking archway
A vision of motion arrested
Poised to thunder through a journey
That was cut short years ago.
It is that most painful of sights
That zenith of shame
A still rollercoaster
A thing designed to rush and swerve
To rattle and roll
To move
To move
To move
And yet
Not a tremor or a twitch
Not a bundle or budge
Not an inch given or taken in any direction
And not a thing it can do to save itself.
A deserted Joyland is a sad sight
It’s a mausoleum housing days long gone
But a still rollercoaster is the incarnate form of wasted potential
And though I never cared to roll on coasters myself
I know heartbreak when I see it
For nothing is more heartbreaking than wasted potential.
Below are the early notes I took…
The colors don’t just disappear.
They linger, faded and scratched.
They’ve lost their luster, yes
But they cling on long enough
To remind you of the old days
When they were new and
And the reds were cherry red,
The whites like crisp linen,
The greens of fresh cut grass.
They’re all broken up now by
The rusty bars of a chain link fence
So there’s no way to look at them straight
Unless you hop the fence and go in.
The sounds were vivid once, too,
But now they’re just echoes
Trapped in the tattered canvas of the merry-go-round
And bouncing around in the concession stand,
Ghosts from a happier time
When the towering frameworks rattled with glee
And the air was thick with sweets and cries of joy.
There are no more cries here today
Neither sad, nor happy
Because a closed up park does not speak or shout
But rather suggests, invites, reminds.
A preserved memory,
An active and boisterous place in stasis
Frozen in melancholy rather than agony
Ignored but not forgotten.
Their cries of joy are fit now for dark living rooms
With glowing screens and plush cushions,
Where motion is simulated rather than actualized
Joyland is a museum piece bordering on a mausoleum.
A still rollercoaster is nothing but wasted potential
And nothing is more heartbreaking.
There was always the risk of injury in an amusement park
Everything from an acute sunburn to a total mechanical failure
Was possible,
But in a living room your only risk is acute thumb cramp
And the total collapse of your social capacities.
It’s amusement behind a chain-link fence.