Bouncy Castle

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You ever sit at a garden fété and see
that rubbery container of air, fashioned
into some kind of tubular domicile
and think
“I want to be five again”?

“I want to be the age when those castles,
those jumpy bumpy lumpy maísons,
scare and delight me
with every ginger step I partake
as Trevor (the quiet kid from the back of class)
throws himself against rebounding walls
like an ineffectual Spider-man”?

“I wanna be ten, when I could jaunt around
a steam fair thinking about trains and
how ace they are, getting to travel in lines
on straight tracks with no care for sidelines!”
And fate commands you to check your sidelines
and there it is.

Generator working overtime
to pump vast gallons of nitrogen
into a smooth cylindrical abode full of peers
giggling and jostling and tumbling.

You can, you know.
There is no age limit on bouncy castle usage,
there is no age limit on being free,
being you.

Time pulls the shades over our internal eyes
and makes us feel the opposite.
Time is the universal rival,
experienced beyond aeons,
and will outlast us all.

But…

Inevitability of our ends
Is the induction to the embrace of
Time’s only enemy.

Truth defeats Time, time and again
and Time is actually ours,
for our flailing fingers,
to grasp and grapple and mould and fashion

But making Time ours into what we desire
is tougher than any accounting report
or customer service position or ticketing system.

And once we pierce with conviction
the mental and temporal barriers of time
we can sail so high into the sky
with the cushion of a bouncy castle below.