Daily Archives: August 19, 2011

August 19, 2011

Dark Dance

By Tony Brown

I may be
dark dance,
but I do
somewhat move.

I might be
sick with trance,
but I am
not altogether unmoved —

even muscles stiff as this
have memory
of twitching and start
pulsing, so slowly

that to see them
one might think of corpse
or perhaps coma. But
they’re not —

can’t explain
how they think
of these things:
my brain isn’t theirs,

but they do.  And thus
my back against this wall,
tarantella-charged.
I am not unmoved,

merely sunk in, dark dance 
wallflower before ordinary
ecstasies of quotidian
minuet.  It’s just this:

I seek frenzy again
as I once knew it,
and this, I see,
is not. 

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August 19, 2011

Moving The Body

By Tony Brown

Here is rigor mortis
of tendon — see
how much board there is now
in the planked body.

How
much rod,
how little child here.
Years of the cane
have tricked out
this hide. All 
the old
is showing.

The dull-brassy,
wear-beaten
body of life’s work
is stretched
here on the blank of bed,
waiting for the attendants
to arrive.

Words knotted
tight in every throat
as family watches
progress of the last care:
the One stripped,
cleaned, gurneyed out to 
black hearse on black asphalt
waiting to black out across
black-rained roads to parlor
and prep.

She was too young for this,
they say.
But not in fact:  after all,
death just means
it’s time.  And her time before
this death
was hard. 

After, all linger.
Won’t move just yet,
in deference
to stiffness witnessed
shortly ago.  

When they leave, at last
the old house
built of good wood
is again empty.

 

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August 19, 2011

That Found Key

By Tony Brown

That found key
argues
for a missing lock.

There is the whole
of knowledge:
that any one thing
leads to another.

When they are
put together, 
a secret is exposed
or at the least, 
something’s learned.

Put the key
in your pocket
and shut up about
whether’s it’s junk or
treasure: you may not know
which it is for a long time,
maybe not ever.  But

if you honor
the world, you’ll
hold on to it
and keep looking
until there’s nowhere
left to look,
or you are unable to continue —

and when you’re gone,
if you go without knowing,
some heir will pick up the key

and begin,
because it argues for
a lock, and the lock argues
for a door,
and the door argues
for passage. 

 

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