The roller coasters never used to the scare me
it was always the lines which I feared
waiting and waiting and waiting
allowing my mind the space to run wild
with images of crushed, collapsed, metal
the loops and the speed never scared me
the rickety clank of the old tracks
or the hydraulic rumblings of the new
these things never scared me
it was my own mind which scared me
the certainty with which I knew
that I was never going to wait in another line
ever again
that after this,
all would be like before I was born
the hazy dark silence
of an unconscious mind
But the roller coasters?
I always used to enjoy the roller coasters

The kid has it all since that’s how it works.
Blindfolds cover the view of life and
Smiles seem to be everlasting.
Then the apartment needed a new couch.

Looking out windows and porches to
Watch the sunrise changes your view
Of how to buy your coasters, but couches
Take time to know. That’s the one.

My couch is white and green
With two stains from when
Nillie tried to eat pudding.

Must love rollercoasters. I mean not exactly roller coaster per se; although actual roller coasters would be a bonus. I am a marginal enthusiast.  I mean you should have that kind of attitude and vigor for life and new adventures. Rollercoaster lovers are committed to experiences over things.

Must love books, movies, museums, the outdoors, and live theatre. I want to sit in a room and read with you, and too you. I want to glance up and catch your face the moment it just enlivens, inspired by the joy of brilliant writing. I want to nestle close alongside you and share the electric energy that passes between the stage players and their audience both as they present and as we process afterward. I want to watch a movie, and discuss ourselves to exhaustion and collapse into each other. I want to experience art and history together and watch the aliveness the great humanities use to enlighten our mindfulness to the magic of living experience.  I want to cuddle up alongside you by a fire, my arms wrapped around you,  our bodies sore from hiking the splendor of a forest trail.

Must have beautiful eyes; but then beautiful souls always have beautiful eyes, because it is the eyes that reflect  most honestly the inner essence of the soul.  Must be passionate about politics, religion, pop-culture,  justice and the planet. That passion always shimmers when you peer deeply into beautiful eyes.  You are the kind of woman who knows we have only one life to live in our time on earth and you plan to maximize it with mirth and  

In return, I will spoil you with with words and pour affection on your body. I will look deeply inside those eyes every opportunity I have to gaze. I will cover you in kisses so every inch of you knows how you excite every inch of me. I will kindle that shared passion for the extravagance of human experience. I will cultivate the planting  of our sapling romance till it blossoms into the love I want to give and share.

If you are that kind of woman, reach out to me. I am the kind of guy who's looking to fall in love with someone like you.

Once, I read about a theme park
The roller coasters reached the bottoms of the clouds and
the speeds broke the sound barrier
Children went there daily
They laughed and they screamed and they smiled from dawn until dusk
They won prizes
and they were very much alive

I went to look up that theme park last month
The rides had all shut down
And they were completely still
Nobody had touched it in years
The streets of this city that were once full of life
Were dull and motionless
The windows were broken
The prizes were gone
The bright lights of all colors
were now empty shattered bulbs

The only emotion was empty
All of the happiness and joy
And the laughter and life
Was completely gone
I think of this often
How one place can hold such life one day
and the next be as good as dead?

I saw myself in this corpse
My body, decaying
The joy I would feel and the dancing and laughter has
now all turned to a blank slate of gray
My mind had shut it all away and I am nothing
I once held better days
But now I am a broken roller coaster
Abandoned and corroded
Because I once got so high
And I once moved so fast

But now I am frozen in my place, hidden away

Forgotten like an erased word off a paper

Once, I read about a theme park

And all I learned was I am empty too

There’s a strange cold, appraisal with a straight and steady stare
Which leads a man to wonder, exactly what is happening there,
Leads a man to ponder if it’s even now worthwhile
To persevere with contact with the rudeness and the guile?
It all leaves me apprehensive whilst examining askance
This peculiar reaction to my pleasant, frank advance?

What’s the ****** story here, right up and down the Coast,
Where initial stiff behaviour paints appallingly, the host?
Perhaps there’s cold distain for all the people of the North
Or inadequacy’s pink finger wagging guilty, back and forth?
Perhaps the ****** weather with its constant moody pall
Has afflicted them with gloominess, which could explain it all?

Geographic separation…that’s the answer, I suspect
With the hand of subjugation interfering, if correct?
And the constant ****** hardship and disaster at the mines
With suspicion they’ve been cast adrift to weather their hard times?
And the lack of any sympathy to coalesce at best
In a resultant indifference, now directed at the rest.

But…..
There’s a funny turn of fortune here for after a short while
Indifference turns quite pleasantly towards a welcome smile,
Communication warms to a chortelled stream of fun
And the beaming face indicates an acceptance has begun.
Just as soon as you acquiesce to a personable degree
And identify yourself as being one with them, you see….
The Coasters will embrace you with uncommon earthy grace,
And it’s Identified so easily, by the grin upon your face.

M.
Karamea
Wild West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand.
11 May 2016

I love roller coasters.
I love the old rickety ones that jar my spine and push me into my little sister and i can feel our ribcages collide with the
click-click-click as they slowly build suspense and propel me towards the sun.

my last boyfriend hated them. He felt that his stomach couldn’t stand up to the drop of gravity so he ran at the sight of the climb up to reason and fled the line when i unbuckled my seatbelt.

i love waiting in line for a **** good thrill, and i count down the minutes until the spill of my scream echoes into the hairspray of the woman in front of me as she holds the hand of her cut-offs husband.

i guess you aren’t one to pine for the wooden tracks of thrill, either. but last night i lay in bed, on my side, trying to memorize the planes of your face, trying to calculate the angle of your nose as it leans slightly to your right, you tell me it’s crooked, i tell you it is lovely. it is the finest architecture this side of eiffel tower and you run your hands from the top of my collarbone, down the valley of my waist to the top of my hip, and you tell me you wish you had a tiny car to run along the line.

most of all i love the fall.

This is the game, set and matching end-piece to what is known as:

http://hellopoetry.com/poem/385266/poetry-round-find-your-self-within/

by way of an introduction....

T'is season to move forward,
back to old acquaintances renewed,
sand, water and salty sun,
three lifelong friends who,
Auld Lang Syne,
never ever forget me

I get drunk on their eternity,
their celestial beauty,
and they, upon my tarnished earthly being,
muse and are bemused

unreservedly and never judgingly,
share shards of inspiration unstintingly,
we share, never measuring
this captain's humanity, his human efficacy,
by mystical formulae of reads or hearts

grains of sand, water wave droplets and sun rays,
and his beloved words, derived there from,
all only know one measure...
immeasurable
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/699991/adieu-my-crew-my-crew/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Pilgrimage (Reunion)


at last to begin,
to begin the 'at last,'
this reunion occurs
this first day of June
where on my
body's flesh colored calendar,
X red-marked,
deeper than any real cut of despair


this morn, leave for familiar parts,
embarking 100 steps to that
Adirondack chair,
my name, my self,
(oh god at long last)
so often, long lovingly
revealed unto you


the garden's sundial welcomes me,
Prince, Guardian, of the gate to the green,
the green steppe way to bay and beach,
a brief song of "ring around the irises,"
blooming around him,
he issues,
to celebrate his own glory recalled,
his own purpled prosed long ago one ecrivez'd,
by having the third mate
ring the greened worn,
bronzed ship bell
upon conclusion of
his raising of the gate


shorts and T white hair shirt,
costume de rigueur
of this Peconic pilgrimage,
turban and baseball uncapped,
stepping humbly
toward that worn wood throne
where carved are
the initials of
my poetic friends,
and his vast modest,
Concordia of poetic essays


Those odd disordered
collection of aleph bets
that have been prepared for this hour,
are sun dappled,
breeze caressed,
wave watched,
a fresh redressing after a
dum hiems,
a long dark winter


all rise up welcoming with voices
tremulous yet oratory,
sing with a love so spectacular ,
Handel's Messiah Hallelujah Chorus,
au naturel


the armies of ants declare this a
Truce Day,
parading before me in formation,
the rabbits race
in elegant uniforms,
white tailed bemedaled, dress grays,
announcing their  showoff arrival
with a new across-the-lawn
land speed record


the dear **** deer,
familiar families and generational,
look upon this human and
grumble while chewing our shrubbery,
an act of sherwooded lawn high robbery
but perforce acknowledging our entrance,
by uttering a Balaam blessing/curse,
a neutralized
"****, they're back"


the seagulls on the dock,
sovereign state observers from
Montauk and the far island city,
sent by the mother winds superior,
observers and reporters to nature everywhere,
Summer Season of Man Has Begun


a few white wakes disturb the water's composure,
the early low arc'd sun has not peaked in strength,
at 10:00am, the temp just breaches 60 Fahrenheit,
the beach sand untrod, no unlasting human impressions,
no children's red pails yet to them decorate,
amidst the sea life's detritus and smooth licked pebbles


Enough.


each tree ring and grass blade demands a verse,
an all my own tributary accolade,
this too much to accommodate


a year ago I issued an invitation,
do so again for my word is my bond
my responsibilities, my *******,


there are chairs for all
on my righted round and my motet left,
here, there are
no Americans,
no Canadians,
no Aussies or Brits,
or Indians and Fillipinos,
no African or Asians present,
East nor West,
None Invited here,
Only Poets


even those hardy pioneer
West Coasters, a proud lot,
and my Southern family drawling,
and perhaps lessening the mourning
just a touch, a minute modicum,
all sit quiet in the admixture
of poets come to celebrate
the blessing to have been tasked,
to write from and of places we visit
in the cerebral,
and to imbibe each other's words


Three Hundred and Sixty Four Days ago,
I wrote :

We sit together in spirit, if not in body,
You join me in the Poet's Nook,
A few frayed and weathered Adirondack chairs
Overlooking the Peconic Bay,
Where inspiration glazes over the water,
And we drown happily in a sea of words...

I am exhausted.
So many gems (poets)
to decorate
My body, my soul

I must stop here,
So many of you have reached out,
none of you overlooked.

Overwhelmed, let us sit together now
And celebrate the silence that comes after the
Gasp, the sigh, that the words have taken from
Our selves, from within.

Once again, in your debt

Again,
I await your beckoning wave of hello,
greet you in your mellifluous native tongue,
iced drinks at the ready,
the opening ceremony already started,
when all are seats taken
we commence officially,
with a blessed

*"Now, let us begin"