36. danse macabre al fresco

I will tell you | in the dance

of it | I have no work for it

the pirouette | the posture

the seeming | the seaming

I want to see | the whole of

it | the thing as thing | not

think | a reality | certain to

allow us a sense of practice

the way of | the words isn’t

enough | I want the feeling

the falling | the frail body

against the big world | just

a chance to feel | something

solid | footfalls across the

floor | jeté | which means

I do something | I am here

to take a breath | to gallop

to prance | to do any man-

ner of movement restricted

to humans in dance or flight

 

the word is so lost now | you

know that | replaced | after

so many lies | no word mat-

ters | no word is resurrected

and none brings back to life

anything | poetry is an echo

of a world once was | large

and now is small | the lies so

we might not believe in any

truth | the lies piled up like

bodies | during a pandemic

as the ghosts multiply | they

intersect and | overlap each

other | they make a nearby

lie mean | even less than it

once did | only seconds ago

every ghost is | one person

killed by a lie | one asked to

beg to die | and lies build up

and the lies grow | and death

reigns upon us | death rains

over us | for we are but the

remnants of | fragile truths

evaporating into the lost air

 

believe in the body | and the

bone | believe in the solid not

the vapor | clench your hands

your teeth | feel the muscle of

your thumb | the pain of the

bite | the pain of the bite into

fingers | the pain of the bite

to the tooth | the body in the

practice | of simple resilience

against the lies | sown into the

very earth | the loamy soil of

our dream of harvest | forget

the word | so paltry | shallow

given to fits of pique | and the

carrier of lies | into the ear

and onto the page | carved into

stone | so that lies will rule us

all the days of our lives | all the

nights of our terror | the fear of

talking | of saying | but a word