Daily Archives: February 19, 2012

Dance

who
would you sashay toward, do-si-do beside,
promenade or allemande left with
if you were caught in time,  
found yourself in the corny old elegance
of the square dance?

I picture you in gingham
and me in overalls.
I’m hoping you’d have bowed to this partner.
I’ve got a stereotype of you
gently rocking my head.
something lovely and odd and unreal.

now, who you gonna step to?
who do you want to grind with you
in the more familiar
dances of our day?

I’ve got a picture of that too
and I’m in it
and there’s you too, boo.
like what I see.
but it’s not happening.

let’s runaway from these pictures
and get real in that town from the movies
where no one ever dances
by law.  

it’s some kind of fiction
but let’s go there anyway
since this is some fantasy
and we can defy the dream law
and dance however we want
or maybe

find other stuff to do.
nothing nasty, just moonlight
and making stuff up
we like out of all the pieces from 
the past.  do-si-do, back that
up, do what feels good.  you know:

dance.

 


Prayer For A Daughter

“Luck for the counting of wars
she has not seen.
May they be
numbered zero.

Love or at the least care
in every face she will see.
May those forever be
as numberless as waves.”

Had she been born,
I would have placed this blessing on
the girl I’ll never see, the girl I never had,
the one who’ll never be.

But I am content.  I did right
to not bring her into
the things
I have had to see,

though I would have loved her
had she been here.  I loved her,
in fact, enough
to have chosen to keep her safe.

Though some have called this selfish,
and some have shaken their heads,
I say to them that the greatest blessing
I placed upon her is this:

she did not have to know me.


Relationship Advice

first and foremost
be yourself

by all means
pull teeth if you’re a dentist
but if you discover
halfway through a procedure
that your patient has become a lion
drop the tools and run
you are no lion tamer

don’t be tempted
by the story of Androcles
into believing that the lion will love you
because you eased his pain
his hunger is always
greater than his pain

if you repair his smile 
all you’ll get
is better bitten