Part 1: Daylight Sabbath
The Jersey Shore is a strange place to hide one’s tears… yet it was there that I sought to pay homage to a manly sorrow…
I came that day with my tortured head wrapped in sweating palms; it hurt and wrung as I throbbed with labor pains left by yesterday’s alcohol…my eyes burned with a sleepless night and were stained with veins of fire-red blood; they appeared cracked and shattered like marbles over open flame…
It did not matter anyway, for I saw no one…I only heard them distantly…
The sea can be healing to the soul… in the caress of salty waves, I called them home… I romped and basked in a possessing sun…I loved in crowds of beautiful blue bathers and blessed the soothing sand till the day was near done…
But God doth propose this simple statement: no rest for the wicked and weary; no sleep for the heavy at heart; confusion to the Mad Men…
For when day melted to dusk… I traveled to another realm… to an amusement park Babylon by the sea…where spills and thrills and good times for all the kiddies can be had…where games of skill and chance try out the older ones – win a teddy bear or pack of cigarettes; just a nickel or a dime or a quarter is better yet…where bars and honky-tonks resound with anything from cool jazz to acid rock…and lovers lie under the Boardwalk…
It was there in Babylon that I saw her again…the one I had come to forget…to drown in salt spray and live to love another day… our eyes touched, she hesitated turned and walked away…come back, I can’t forget you…
Damn you! But alas, I stood frozen as she disappeared…and then another face…a familiar blonde…nothing more than old friends, we stood like bookends…so we rode the Himalaya …the Blonde clung to the seat and safety bar…I sat touching nothing at all… she screamed and I winced…held my head… an echo left by alcohol…but a cold frown from a face in the crowd of onlookers I think pierced me more…And when the ride was over, the face had gone…and we stood contemplating the Roller-Coaster…me and the Blonde…
Part 2: Blazing Sun
Do I hallucinate? Am I losing my mind? I fear that greatly…
For you stand before me Roller-Coaster…awesome Amusement park pyramid…temple to this stilted neon playground by the sea…you laugh…are you laughing at me…I think you laugh at those stupid peons who engage you, who scream with ecstasy by you, who prostitute themselves with cheap thrills by you…pagans don’t know you Roller-Coaster, do they? You evil Coliseum… stop laughing you Devil’s whore, you’ll get no trick from me…so that’s the way you play the cue ball, Roller-Coaster, get in the back door… my companion the Blonde…fever her with your Temptation…very well then, I must accept your challenge for her, but I’ll call you a thousand curses if you disappoint me…I remember now only pieces as a dreamer with his dreams upon awakening…I remember intoxication had returned…a second drunk…a false chemical high…the people I saw were blind grotesque horrors… I remember too, a vexing shadow…it rode with me, hung like a noose from an unseen gallows…the Blonde sat anticipating and unaware…the Roller-Coaster cars rose up the steep track… slowly…steadily…chain pull…a wild summer breeze lapping across my face…I could see the restless waves of the ocean…crystal blue…and when the car had reached its peak, we were jettisoned…it jarred around the curve, and for a red instant, we were blinded by a blazing sunset…it’s Inferno was clearly marked…heat waves rolled across its face…and quickly as we had been blinded by the Sun, we were plummeted endlessly downward along a labyrinth of corkscrew tracks…round…round…spinning dizzily round…and when the ride was over, my shadow companion struck at me…thoughts questions…something written in the fire of the Sun…it reminded me of her…I wanted to love it… I wanted to love her…I wanted to touch the Sun and not get burned…I wanted to see it again…I wanted to see her again…
My face was sweat-soaked and feverish… to ride again…we got in the car…a ride measured in heartbeats…up ever so slowly…up…what would I do at the top? Would I die? Should I jump? Weird scenes of smashed skulls and splattered brains…up, up…rhythms pulsed in my veins…words trembled in my brain…red…red is the naked fire…red is the blazing sunset …up…up…red are the gates of Hell…red is the hair of my wicked lover…up, up…the future is uncertain and the end is always near…the car was jettisoned and I tried to stand…
Jude can you see the Sun ???
My words flowed like particles across an electronic field…I fell..black…gray…then white…
I had blacked out…only to fall back in my seat…
Part 3: Armored Night
And when the sun had gone…so had the Blonde…and I stood alone, apart and afraid…
Standing by the Boardwalk railing…the noise and the confusion of the Amusement park blended into a mindless, absent roar…the Roller-Coaster stood dark and cold like the ruins of a once bloody gladiatorial arena…
I gazed out over the ocean into the finger of darkness…and I thought of her…and all the wicked thoughts that pierced my mood…
I looked to the place where the Sun had gone down…and I turned away…