a
smell of smoke from last night
I
throw a few darts
tippy-toeing
the old
fashioned
projectiles
at
the board on the way in
they
were tri-feather
turkey
darts
the
wide wooden kind
still
popular in upstate NY
the
place smelled
vacuum
freshener chic
some
kind of Elvis smell
that
said to me as a child
this
is the kind of place
that
sees a lot of adult things
at
night, when the underneath light
behind
the whiskey counter is on
so
I pay attention and look
like
I’m not paying attention
I
walk past scented
sanitizing
bathroom deodorizers
sparkle
wax glaze spread
evenly
over the lanes
I swim in tiny
daggered lights
the grill, jukebox,
stand up video games
and televisions are
dancing flicker turnstile
cabarets at the shimmer slow
silhouettes
of crunchy eyed adults
they
are all
in
early rise
trying
to keep up
with
re-hydration
while
us kids
are
all sugared up
I
remember looking at
this
palace
as
if it were the absolute middle
of
a suburban-Friday
night
to
Saturday morning
howl
a prowling wonder
stuck
in my eyes
every
time I went
bowling
on Saturday mornings
the Fryolator was already on
because,
after all
this
is America
hungry
for eternal weekends
soon after we arrive
the
place starts to smell
like
French fries and
the
baby powder
we
use for our sweaty fingers
to
release the hurtled ball smoothly
most
of us have our own gear
that
we bring, some of us
have
more than others
some
of us even use
the
house equipment
while
we all use
the
bowling shoe spray
it
keeps the place
a flip-side rose
of
roller skating rinks
there could be no mistaking
the
timpani drum
scatter
pin falls
cascading though
in the background
from where I stood
near the front desk
telling
me anything otherwise anyway
there would be no skating today
no organ or space
disco music
with
spotlights turning
no glitter
light rain coming
only waiting conquest and failure
around the well carpeted
corner
separating the lanes
from where I was standing
trying to get my shoes on
I
look quickly
back and forth
jumping at the corner
peeling, peering into nearly there
background
noise building beneath
familiar bleach white light
bleeding
into my wanting
to
know my lane assignment
I
look at the bulletin board standings
for
this week’s match-up under
a
gleam of banked florescent fixtures
paying
homage
to the shiny geometry
of its 50 lanes
and
as I do a high order
of chaos takes over
and
I am just another kid
giving
up cartoons
to go bowling
I am another marzipan competition
molded to look like the parts of America
we are told to start to collect
the
parts we are told
would be staying nostalgia
free
so that if we were ever
to
become old fashioned or stuck
in a future that didn't remember us
they
would remember our names
and all our scores
and all we had to do
was
look inside the odd smell
of their memory and hold it
to find a map back
to where we are all
our own little pieces of perfect, framed
EJR
©
"..our own little pieces of perfect, framed"
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