The Five Stages
V. Acceptance
I sweep morning frost off the ramp.
Call me the Escapist,
You geese of the park’s lake that fly
Above, while I skate this
Ramp. A small half pipe, taco shaped,
The clinking axle stall
To a rock to fakie tail grind
Feels better than pain’s fall.
A lady in white skates with quads,
Back and forth goes my board,
While the lady twirls and slides out
Like some lady from lore,
Brought low by gravity’s cruel joke
Of almost landing it.
My half-cab rock-and-roll rolls free,
I’m too legit to quit.
And she lands it backwards, wind sprite,
On the spinning way down.
Dragging one foot behind her skate,
A queen claims royal crown
By conquering gravity’s law.
And we fly while fools pray,
Our war against boredom today
For tomorrow’s crusade.
Orange leaves litter the battlefield
Towering spires of wood
Point to the sky, nature’s steeples.
I would land this trick if I could.
My armored knees and crimson helm
Absorb disaster’s blast.
One more attempt yields failures fruit,
Whose red stains scar and last.
I knew an old man down at the skatepark,
Who had been skating since the golden years
On backyard halfpipes made from oaken bark.
So, singing his tale of blood, sweat, and tears
He sings a police song, skates the plaza,
Leaving his tickets crumpled in the wind.
But the pigs haunting specter phantasm
Catches our friend until the very end.
Not paying his dime for skateboarding crimes
Was all the law needed for seven years.
Adults didn’t care, a sign of the times.
All locked up, his mama cries warm wet tears.
Like a true skater, he refused to bail
So, Johnny Law threw his carcass in jail.
Heart drops into the bottom of my gut
The pit and the pendulum keep swinging
While my craven raven curses the luck
For in my tell-tale heart, bells are ringing,
My frontside ollie hop frogs the coping
and stalls the waxen seal of broken casques.
The terror of the gorilla choking
My childhood comfort that should never last
So, I drop in, and damn the long Pfaal
My sliding grinding ride from darkest hell
Upon martyred knees that heed the blood’s call
Is a stunning number that I wear well.
So, when I drop in, skating all alone,
Bust up the palace for Edgar A. Poe.
I started skating the bottom pumping
Up and down, up and down, feeling the ride.
You announced you were an ally to me
On our second date with such swelling pride.
Our tailor-made love was burned a cinder
Upon a pile of sticks colored agate
That erodes my heart to this stone’s center,
The dog or the tail, pick one, and wag it.
So, I flush our fire down this half pipe,
Ignoring the center since days of green,
Filled with green creature’s rage of howling bite.
That stalls on my tail while I rock that swing!
I need the speed to bonk over coping,
That bonks my heart with hope interloping.
I was scared of the high dive as a boy.
Now, I call myself the Psycho Tranny
As I play with my small fond sidewalk toy,
That ollies the pad and lands the manny.
My first time in the deep end as a girl
I fell so far that I broke my small arm
At the bottom of the bowl fractures twirl
That faces danger and embraces harm.
The real fear is the mound in the closet
Of ripper skeletons that roll unseen
Where blood pours from the wounds as a faucet
So, all hail this mad Psycho Tranny Queen.
Pay homage, bow down, but for heaven’s sake,
Don’t tell her that she sounds like Norman Bates.
A center is that which I know nothing.
I run the risk across the hazard line
I wish I was different, the wishes sting
barbs my broken heart that builds up inside.
It is not for this I am called extreme,
But trucking four wheels to excitement’s board
Up the ramp of the pyramid of dreams,
Where this feeble attempt leaves letters scored.
But our dropped half-pipe heat leaves me so sick
As the grinds mount up into sliding wax
That seals our correspondence with no tricks,
That screeches to a halt when my heart cracks!
My center bolts the wheeled trucks of my life,
My center spins, as is gravity’s right.