Living
An Impromptu on Roller Skates
From The Old Soldier's Story (1915)
Rumble, tumble, growl, and grate!
Skip, and trip, and gravitate!
Lunge, and plunge, and thrash the planks
With your blameless, shameless shanks:
In excruciating pain,
Stand upon your head again,
And, uncoiling kink by kink,
Kick the roof out of the rink!
In derisive bursts of mirth,
Drop ka-whop and jar the earth!
Jolt your lungs down in your socks,
Oh! tempestuous equinox
Of dismembered legs and arms!
Strew your ways with wild alarms;
Fameward skoot and ricochet
On your glittering vertebrae!
Cite this poem
MLA
Riley, James Whitcomb. “An Impromptu on Roller Skates.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/riley/471/.
Chicago
Riley, James Whitcomb. “An Impromptu on Roller Skates.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/riley/471/.
Read this poem with the Codex →