No Coney Island ride is this,
nor Rodgers and Hammerstein romance:
more Bradbury’s dark undertones,
offering retrogressive trance.
We buy our ticket with childish glee,
hoping to grab the brass ring,
but the longer we ride, the quicker it goes:
a gaudy and sinister thing.
Riding garish hobby horses,
we head gladly into the past,
and circle ‘round and ‘round and ‘round:
each cycle may be our last.
Why must our minds be stuck in time,
refusing progress and change,
cycling through the same old ways,
rather than improve and rearrange?
I jumped off long, long ago:
no recycled past for me.
Now I just watch the pretty lights,
and dance to the calliope.