A Dancing Line

Dancing apsaras carved in a wall of the Bayon temple, Angkor Wat complex, Cambodia

I know, I sometimes forget to dance;
to shuffle my feet, my memories;
to workout and prevent that disease
of sitting too much and forgetting
to dance. 

"I have to thank you: you taught me
not to be embarrassed of dancing."
Thank you for having told me that
as my soul danced when it heard it.
A propos, "That's music to my ears."

"You didn't notice it? She was eating
you up with her eyes." No, I didn't.
I was dancing as one should dance,
with abandonment, just as we do
unwittingly when we walk enough.

Dancing is walking without leaving.

Classic and New

for Jennifer


I don’t believe in soul mates, love.
That would be demeaning to you:
you who were born in years later
made specifically for me? Yikes! 

What I’m sure it exists is rhyme,
where we can rhyme with others
in couplets, strophes that we read
to others each, then to each other.

All our poems depend on factors
beyond reason and thus in poetry,
which is music in text fabricated,
from the mighty ode to the petty.

Even without text we still dance
and our common dance is tango:
the male holding you, directing 
your female self back to trance.

All of us slaves to our rhythms,
which rhyme even in dissonance, 
the length of our time revolving
on how we rhyme day after day.

My rhyme and dance with you
is scary: we might not stop ever,
thus I sense fever lurking yonder,
as music without silence is eerie.

Yet we rhyme as we never did:
to celebrate such new wonders
I opted here for a rhyme different
with alliterative letters or words. 

[pause for a tango nuevo arabesque]

As I write my love poems to you,
freedom of speech is decapitated
fundamentally, almost yesterday,
a vulgar yesterday that's yet to die.

I wonder if similar worldly events
that turn lovers' woo into wounds
should make my wooing you end 
or by rebel contrast gain weight.

This much I know: the structural
world is flawed, and we must try 
to bring back its humane stance 
by rhythm and structure of tango.

A pause, love. And here we go.



_______

image: a postcard of circa 1919.