Paul J Penton – Songwriter

Rollercoaster – Daily Writing – June 29

He stands on the back, tall thin and gangly as if he doesn’t eat enough or his metabolism eats stuff up way too quick, the guardian in a flannelette shirt with a red and black cross pattern. He’s in control riding the back of the trolleys, like Captain Ahab on the high seas, his rudder, his only control, is that lever. It looks like the big old things they used to use in Railway Junction boxes, probably the same vintage. It has a caliper like a bike brake that he pumps and soothes between snaking dips and heights, measuring the screams of the participants, giving them just enough. The air cuts through his nostrils on the dives and he breathes in the sea, just a hundred meters away on the farthest leg of the circuit, he also imagines the smell and taste of a cigarette on the break that’s coming soon.

He likes the way the smoke rolls over his tongue and bites his throat. The smell of the still burning sulphurous explosion of the match that fights against the steamed dim-sims in the packet in the other hand, they hang near his nose as he lights up. He goes for a walk outside, drifting through the Big Mouth of Luna Park looking up and but being blind to the Garish colours, he’s seen them so many times now it’s like a blind spot. The cigarette is stubbed under foot as the second shift leads the coaster around the park, it ratchets its way up the first dipper and a series of whoops and screams fade off toward the other end of the park. The dim sim is warm and pudgy in his hand like a chicken skin not quite cooked enough, needles and dials on the taste scale pin over as the soy infused balls seem to explode in his mouth, cabbage and vegetable reek through his nostrils. This will all sit nicely in his gut as he ballerinas the carts around the track another few times today, before he goes home to the bedsit off Grey street with the 21 centimeter TV……