after “A Supermarket in California” by Allen Ginsberg
An Amusement Park in Anaheim
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Disney, as I strolled down the boardwalks between the stunts with a nausea wholly expected after a high ride.
In my gaseous nightmare, and hoping for relief, I leaned over a steel-tubed queue-aligner, waiting for my equilibrium.
What horses and what dinosaurs! Mismatched species bobbing in tune! Poles up their bellies! Ducks with the alligators, Wilma next to Fred Flintstone!—and you, Sailor Popeye, why were you slapping Blimpy with popsicle sticks?
I know you, Walt Disney, shameless, greedy young bugger, plotting to trademark ears on the Mus musculus, that Mickey the Mouse of yours.
I spied you hiring draftsmen in droves: Draw Mickey in gloves. Give Minnie dimples. What about fan clubs?
I flickered in and out of the mercury lights on stanchions praising you, and wondered in my hallucination if you now lived in hell.
We must cross the Charon-mediated river in our independent ferries gauging punishment, avoiding civil and penal litigants, and never admitting truth.
Where are we going Walt Disney? The rides stop at sunrise. Does Magic Mountain ascend to God?
(I close my eyes and pretend your supremacy in animation never happened.)
Will we ferris till dawn on independent wheels? The tunnels of love are closed, coasters slow the rollers, we’ll both airplane home.
Will we drown claiming we are both prophetic fools shamming real experience with pipe dreams, crazed by our muddy visions?
Ah, dear hustler, con-man, cagy old snakeoil-flogger, what false prophecy did you paint when Superman vaulted the phonebooth and you fell out of the mint limelight and started firing the mouse department for slack treatment of cheese?
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