Dammit,
I’m sick of laying low.

Thinking of the flame around your head tonight —
I’m just putting it out there, even through tears:

Red,
let’s get
world-shiftingly drunk again
and shift the world.

Let’s dance again
to those songs that sounded old
the minute we wrote them.

Let’s get out there

and bop fantastic, weaving
in and out again, the old
schoolers telling the freshmen
how it is.  Let’s be wild
as sunflowers, rolling our vowels
like kegs into the sunset
and on through the night
that was always the sacred rebuke
to the next day, which we loved well
in its own way, though it never compared
to the moment.

Let’s pull the bourbon from the shelf
and suck it down,
imagine it tastes like kissing our best lovers
over and over, imagine
the angels not caring what we do,
the devils and imps not caring what we do,
the whole of unfair creation giving up
judgment for once,

because I’m sick of laying low,
waiting for something that I know won’t happen.
Sick of tears and grieving when the sky
is an offering every day, no matter its color.
Sick of dances undanced,
songs strangled on the back of my tongue,
sick of unworn costumes and feathers
that have forgotten flight…

You’re the flame on my dance card tonight,
just for tonight, and I want us to burn
the black back into the corners
and sear the excuses, the rationalizations,
leave them charred and discarded
and forgotten.

There’s a flame on my dance card tonight
that won’t be drowned in weeping,
won’t be quenched by time,
won’t be stopped by anything…
a flame that burns, snaps to the music,
flares and roars and opens up clearings
where the light can come in,

I want to dance again,
old school firedogs racing the burn,
giving no quarter to the rain up ahead.

So
let’s dance, Red;
let’s light up and

roll, Red,
for as long as we both can roll.