CARNIVALS

The smell of popcorn and perspiration...Sweet smells of cotton candy...Customers pass the booths, and smell onions, hotdogs, barbeque, and cheap perfume. This is the carnival. Alcoholic, roadie-hillbillies smell of booze. They stand at their posts with jailhouse tattoos, red-eyed and dirty. They take tickets for the tilt-a-whirl with greasy hands, showing the dirt under their finger nails. They ogle all the giggling, baby, teenaged girls, who are just starting to pop some breasts. This is the carnival, abundant with wild-assed teenagers walking arm-in-arm. He wears a leather jacket, and sports a greasy ducktail hair-do that went out of style in the 50's. It's 90 degrees tonight. She proudly wears tight, hip-hugger shorts. She has pounds of cheap pancake makeup on her acne scarred face. Her white belly and pierced navel hang over the top of her jeans, straining to blow the button clear off...like a bullet. Run for cover! She has heavy eye makeup, and too much lipstick on her mug. Her hair is sprayed stiff, just like the cotton candy.
This is the carnival.
People with no money to spare, play confidence games. "One more try, and you're gonna' win, I can feel it", the carnie says. "This is your lucky day"! The proud father walks off with a garish looking plush animal worth less than five bucks. No mind that it cost him a twenty to win. It's for the kid, by God! "Nothing is too good for my kid"!...This is the carnival.
People drinking cheap beer and wine, smoking joints in the parking lots...They go on the rides, they puke behind the generator trailer...They never make it to the blue, plastic, Johnny-on-the-Spot. No one saw them anyway. "Screw em' if they did"! The inane line up for another draft beer...This is the carnival.
Rock and roll is on the center stage...Electric guitars and huge sound systems are screeching and blaring, like wounded animals. Strobe, colored lights, and fog machines, add to the strangeness of the night. Sulfur burns everyone's lungs...(the leftovers from the 'awesome' fireworks display)...People are camped and cramped on the lawn, with moldy old blankets. They are beds for teenagers, dry humping each other. People are in cheap chairs bought from Walmart, or just plain sitting or laying in the grass or dirt, like farm animals. The music is much too loud. Feedback comes from the guitars, as young men cum in their pants. "Check one...check two...check...check..."...This is the carnival.
They all go back home, really late. They go to the factory job with a hangover, in the morning. The gas, electric, and cable tv bills are still lying on the breakfast table, unopened for three weeks...amidst other clutter.
This is the carnival.


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from my 2nd book: "A Spider in the Corner of my Mind"...available on Amazon.com