Clarity

I could not live without a woman at my side. I am only a one piece of a two-headed and two-sexed being, which is the true biological and thinking organism.

         -Italo Calvino

Coney Island, Alive Again

Walking Brooklyn's boardwalk alone at night,
she calmly, confidently cruised Coney Island's
fiery shore, sparkling with neon reds and blues.

Yellow lasers and fireworks: exploding against night's
drawn, black curtains. The Ferris Wheel igniting
iridescent reds, whites, and purple pears;

playful, glimmering bulbs, by the thousands,
ecstatically spinning upside-down, right-side up,
in delicious dances. Oh, how she yearned to go for a ride

on that slow charming Ferris Wheel, or that fast and exciting
rocking Pirate Ship. Walking Brighton's planks she stared at
the sad clown faces, dressed in cotton-candy pink with long,

white dreadlock hair, and all of the aluminating children,
ten, twelve and throbbing thirteen, running from attraction
to attraction. Smells of hot dogs, pizza, and cinnamon sticks,

nearly lured her in from the hot July night. On she walked,
swiftly, suavely, she swaggered her slender thighs in her
hot-pink netted stockings. She walked toward her date waiting

at the beach playground. Dragged beneath the boardwalk, punched
in the face, kicked in the ribs, she was gang-raped and left for dead.
Screaming Screaming Screaming kids in ecstasy shrieked in joy

as they rode the swinging Pirate Ship, the hurling Hammer,
the twisted Twister and the rattling Cyclone.