Dr. Horcas Quintessential Gypsy Merry-Go-RoundA Poem by David Lewis PagetThe summer season was almost gone The circus had been and went, We looked on sadly across the green As they packed the final tent, The trailers gone to follow the sun And they left the meadow scarred, With a hundred thousand footprints left I could see from my own backyard. The days grew cold and the nights drew down It was dark by half past six, There was nothing left to enchant us now But a night at the local flicks, Then barely a week had passed us by When we woke to the sound of the drum, A laughing, dancing troupe went by And the dress was Romanian. A couple of semis followed on With a painted screen surround, ‘Doctor Horcas Quintessential Gypsy Merry-Go-Round.’ They travelled on to the meadow And they erected tents and things, Then built a great contraption there That looked like a box, with wings. At one end there was an opening Like a giant mouth, with teeth, If you wanted to ride the Merry-Go-Round You had to pass in beneath, Then up on a winding stairway that Would take you right to the top, With a view of the countryside up there That would make your eyeballs pop. It wasn’t a simple fairground ride For the cars were all enclosed, And each in the shape of an Avatar Like a Wolverine, a Toad, And some were painted with leaping flames And others, coated in ice, Some appeared to be bound in chains On one was a sacrifice. A woman, laid on an altar stone A scimitar raised on high, And a great big hulking Blackamoor Looked down with an evil eye, While a man in an ancient topper raised And tapped with his cane as well, ‘Roll up, roll up, for the Moon is up And this ride is bound for hell!’ The people paid at a wicket gate And they moved into the cars, A couple laughed and got into one That looked like the planet Mars, But I was stayed at the wicket gate When they said that the ride was full, And watched it slowly spinning around As I waited, sat on a stool. I’d never seen rides as strange as this The lids were all battened down, You couldn’t see what went on inside As they spun and flipped around, They dipped down under the wooden deck Then shot up into the skies, And came down tumbling, strangely rumbling Screams and shrieks and cries. The band came up to the upper deck And they played a Gypsy tune, They danced themselves to a frenzy there Beneath a harvest moon, They drowned the sound of the riders out The ride, it came to a stop, But when they opened the battened lids I was left with a sense of shock. For steam poured out of the Wolverine, And smoke poured out of the Goat, The other riders came out all right But seemed to be quite remote. They came out shocked, lost in a trance As they filed on down the stair, And nobody spoke, but stared ahead Each lost in his own nightmare. I suddenly changed my mind at that And fought my way down the stair, I couldn’t manage to get my breath ‘Til I got to the open air, I heard it wasn’t Romanian As at first I’d thought it was, It was more like Transylvanian I said to my girlfriend, Ros.
It sold its rides for a single night Then packed and was on its way, Nobody saw which way it went Or knows to the present day, But twenty people had disappeared As the meadow was churned to mud, And I saw signs on the following day That suspiciously looked like blood.
David Lewis Paget © 2013 David Lewis PagetFeatured Review
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11 Reviews Added on June 10, 2013 Last Updated on June 10, 2013 Tags: contraption, fairground, avatar, blood Author
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