Spiral painting
on one wall,
another on another.
Bet I can find another
with luck and a little peek
inside my chest.
It’s not prophecy
to say that —

I know how
entropy
works. I know art 
in a room can’t stop it.
I know art in fact stops
nothing.

This rude muscle
of mine pumps
in a circular rhythm 
played out on paper
on the walls around me.
Sheet music for closure.

I love this room for its mirroring
of human finality; for the heart
twisting in, toward inevitability,
always ready.

His mind by rights
and geneology
should be a dirty old box 
sealed shut
for seventy years
in a family garage,
but it’s apparently not:

he barely blinks at the two men
holding hands across his street,
Main Street,
while having their picture taken
in front of their new home.

He looks at my raised eyebrow
and grunts,

“Don’t you have better things
to worry about
than how I’m gonna react
to the new neighbors?”

Evidently, I don’t.
Having my worst opinions
of my father disproved
is a hard thing —

my own dirty box
broken open.

I refuse to look inside.

What’s the point of standing on that ledge?
You’re incapable of falling fast enough
to die upon impact.  
There’s not enough to you.  You would waft
back and forth all the way,
featherweight.

Step back, don’t be stupid —
the world needs more like you, always thinking,
inventing machines that run on
the combustion of dusty artificial flowers,
developing new ways
to control traffic in Minas Tirith,
pissing on your own garden to keep it bare
and sterile and free of weeds.

You don’t have to be in control
of everything.  Let Death be Death,
coming to you unexpected
at an inconvenient time.  You can call out
your rage then.  You can cry all you want then.
Maybe you’ll gain enough substance by then
for people to note your passage
and not brush you off when you’re gone.

What I’m here for I’m sure
is to be the guy who doesn’t dance

Not the guy who wants to but can’t
Who can’t get out of his seat

But the guy who could but won’t
because it’s not the right moment

When it is the right moment
I have no problem dancing

Get my ass up and swing it
Stomp a mudhole in rhythm’s ass

But it’s gotta be right and righteous
Gotta make the move special when I move

Because not every juxtaposition
of time and song and mood is perfect

I prefer to wait until all three are close
and have some faith that I can only add to it

Not every poem is beautiful
except in the larger sense that all human effort

is beautiful — not every song
is worth hearing except to honor the singer

for trying — I have learned to only dance
when I feel the honest need to honor

what I’m hearing and feeling so
if you see me dancing (and let’s be sure

to say that I do not care
who sees me dancing)

that’s saying something
about something

I am on earth to be the guy
who shocks you when he dances

Make a moment of it
Tell someone you saw it

no matter how bad it was
The magic is in retelling

It won’t be magic
unless someone makes a spell of it