Stepped up
Saw that the faces inside
didn’t see him

Put one hand on either side
of the thick antique window and
pushed

Heard the glazing give
Heard the old wood crackle free
Saw the faces inside
turn and stare
Had the Thought —

so what?

Pushed harder
Shook his head as he pushed
Rocked back
Banged back in and was
Through

Fell forward into the party
Landed on a pile of paper
Knocked it into the fireplace
while getting up

Looked around at the ring
of jewelry and silk
Looked around at tables and chairs
Thrones and risers and tumblers
Jesters and a harem
Soldiers and police
Bishops and judges

Turned back toward the cold air and shouted
to the masses behind him

COME ON

and they came

No Blue Bloods blinking
just a Redtide unblinkered
No Sleepy Hollow legacies
just the Van Winkle casualties
all coming over that busted sill
all wide awake again and ready to wake the Rest

This was The Night Time Right Time
Barging in on Daylight Tradition
This was The Wrong So Wrong
making war on The Stuff Of Legend

COME ON

and what happened next was

born again fiesta pouring over the fat rug into the heart of a drawing room star chamber
anti zombie head busting blackbox waving dog soldiers swarming up online through burned wires
threaded through jimcrack marble and oilsoaked rumors of scriptural falsehood disguised as Godhead
filigree scimitar barks with oars made of sandblasted virgin eponymous rhymewood cut from mythforests
rowing into the shallow end of pools of too warm water scented with the weak piss of old news
dark eyed lovely and bleach pirate plain gong tuning misfits dancing artlessly on slippered wings
while staid children stuck hands into the new air around them and felt orange razor wind
though their now free fingers

COME ON

that was how it started

it always begins
when someone presses just a tad harder
against a window that looks like a wall
till it’s pushed

The dance is simple:
two-step
from bed to work,
work to couch,
couch
to bed, bed
to work…

On weekends
we might break into a brief waltz:
bed to chores or play to bed
to church to chores or couch
to bed,

but always
we come back to
bed to work,
work to couch,
couch
to bed, bed
to work…

There was a movie once
I never saw
about dance marathons. It was called
“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”
I was a kid but I remember the trailer
showed couples draped and struggling
on each other while dulled music dragged them
around a dark floor and
I remember I thought it was strange
because dancing was supposed to be fun,
wasn’t it?