It was early nineteen thirty four
The world was set to change
Europe was on fire
It was time to rearrange

Poland was the first stop
The German Army on the move
So we left for America
I hope you did approve

You came with me to Jersey
On a trip across the sea
You've guarded all my secrets
Known by only you and me

You used to spin quite gaily
Now you just stand there en pointe
You're my clipped wing little angel
That's the name I shall anoint

Thumbelina, Ballerina
Dance your dance for me
We've been together eighty years
You are who I want to be
Thumbelina, Ballerina
Just one more pirouette
We've been together all this time
Our dancing's not done yet

I sit here and remember
All the treasures you once hid
You've still some trinkets in there
Some from when I was a kid

Your tu tu is all tattered
The silk lining frayed and torn
But, you've held together nicely
But, I guess we're both quite worn

Your lipstick isn't red now
I hear your music in my head
It hasn't played for 50 years
I just remember it instead

The music gave up playing
You were slightly over wound
But, you still twirled and kept dancing
Even though there was no sound

Thumbelina, Ballerina
Dance your dance for me
We've been together eighty years
You are who I want to be
Thumbelina, Ballerina
Just one more pirouette
We've been together all this time
Our dancing's not done yet

I've told you more than anyone
Than I have ever known
We've been together now forever
You're the most precious thing I own

You've been with me for two husbands
And you've seen my kids pass on
There's just me and you,  my dancing girl
All the rest of them are gone

Your paint is chipped and cracked
Your pony tail is broken too
If I still can recollect now
In the fall of fifty two

Your spring is rusted tightly
You need a hand to stand up right
But, then again, I do as well
And most days it's quite the fight

Thumbelina, Ballerina
Dance your dance for me
We've been together eighty years
You are who I want to be
Thumbelina, Ballerina
Just one more pirouette
We've been together all this time
Our dancing's not done yet


Charms and little trinkets
Plastic jewellery, real as well
Secrets of a child
Secrets you would never tell

I am now moving to December
Of my calendar of years
Soon my life will end and
There's no one left to shed  me tears

I sit here and I wonder
What shall become of you
My Thumbelina Ballerina
In your dancing dress of blue

You started as a music box
You are not used as that no more
But, Thumbelina Ballerina
Will you dance for me once more?

Thumbelina, Ballerina
Dance your dance for me
We've been together eighty years
You are who I want to be
Thumbelina, Ballerina
Just one more pirouette
We've been together all this time
Our dancing's not done yet

There's a skinny European ballerina dancing for me in my room
And I don't know what to do
Her eyes a piercing blue
There's a pretty European ballerina dancing for me all alone
There's a feeling in my bones
A burning kept in stone
There's a single European ballerina dancing for no one but me
The only thing I see is
Her radiant beauty
There's a lovely European ballerina staring me in the face
My demons held at bay
Transfixed by her grace

Burning brightly as I
stare at the dancer divine
My eyes are full of fire,
aglow in the darkness of night
In the light
She catches my gaze in her sights
My pretty European ballerina
Waits for me to cross the line

The ballerina rises off her feet to stand en pointé.
Sparkles from her white costume shimmering
From the bright lights focused on her.

She elongates her arms into the air, bending her small wrists
And the tips of her delicate fingers lightly touch each other.
She glances at the crowd, looking for him
Even though she knows he is not there.

The long legs of this ballerina are linked, chained together.
And as she hears the music begin to play,
This ballerina slightly tilts her head and turns.

She does not blame him for leaving,
For this ballerina knows she drove him mad.
And onstage she chained her legs tighter and turned faster,
Eyelids fluttered shut, head tilted downward for a brief moment.

Obsession to the point of perfection.
He would never understand, which she always knew.
She had to be perfect.

Her head spinning and facing forward, this ballerina turned faster.
Drunken from Dom Pérignon and love along the coast of La Seine.
Allongé, this ballerina reached further and
Tourné plus vite sur ses pointes.

Kisses filled with wonder outside the Place des Arts de Montréal,
Yet still she had to be perfect.
Faster with every chaîne tour; never stopping, wishing he could stay.

She began to slow with every turn
As the ballet dancers flooded the stage.
White sparkles glistening everywhere,
The Prince made his presence known.

The tears she shed one night on the Pont Marie bridge as he walked way.
This ballerina slowed until she no longer turned, slowly lowering her arms,
One hand gently and softly grazing her face.

She stood in front of two rows of ballet dancers, searching for a face
That she knew would not be there.
Allongé, she bent her wrists where the tips of her fingers lightly touched
Before lowering her arms until they were in front of her.

She danced across the stage towards her Prince
Where he waited, arms outstretched, the ballet dancers facing him.
This ballerina turned once more before falling back into the arms of her Prince.

“I’m perfect.”

the greater technique in writing poetry,
is not really associated with the
scholastic, well at least not with poets-in-residence
at university institution, esp. with the current
curb on free experience of expression
having to walk a ballerina sort of walk on
tip toe, even though a ballerina walk on
hard surfaces is an elephants stomp (swan lake?
the drumming of the ballerinas deafens the
music, what a crude sadistic art-form),
and should ballerinas practice the art-form on
cushions they couldn't do their tip-toe...
a ballerina sort of walk to not cause usurping
apathy by the bullish heart is a paradox...
because hard topics with a ballerina tread will
still become a piano hitting the ground...
and soft topics with a ballerina tread will
only become the agonising loss of firm footing,
and a torture of the trivial having to be danced
upon with such seriousness as the samba would
otherwise allow... the tip-toe having not firm
rooting... if that makes a sensual impression on you,
so be it, it's hardly senseless to write such words,
since you see the symbolic encoding with you words,
so unless these arrangements don't make you blind,
i'm assuming you will not allow anti-geometrics of
certain painters... and instead you're embracing
satisfaction with squares and triangles...
a rigid narrative of pre-planning an expedition to
Antarctica asking for the right provisions of fur,
tents and water and food... it's not up to me to play with
these words for interpretation, i've made the interpretation
a freedom only you can behold, i can't always be found
willing to interpret the arrangement for you,
i'm not into thought ******* and shackling,
and if you're into that... then you're just plain ******* lazy;
i mean, if i was a poet-in-residence at a university
and told to mind recognisable poetic technique
in the range of onomatopoeia and metaphor
and not accept a higher technique, the digression
via the kaleidoscope, the many diversion,
changed subject matters... i'd bore myself to death...
of course there's the rambling technique of
a poetic narrative, a sudden caffeine injection of
the elevated moment, but that technique calls for
a single subject matter - i'm talking explosions...
a return to ballerinas, if poets mind hard subjects,
heavy subjects, and they want to treat on them
gracefully like ballerinas in agony
they will have to embrace the fact that such
"grace" is actually an elephants stomp...
it's no good asking ballerinas to practice their
art by dancing on cushions... the two graces -
one of dance and the other of grace will never allow
you to walk around on tip-tope...
oh come on, interpret it with images of some sort
of comparison, like a ballerina on a tightrope...
i'm not going to be spoon-feeding you
anywhere from the page.

spring clean, the boiler-man came for an annual
check-up, i was working and kept my room
a bit un-kept...
cleaned the windows, hoovered the floor,
steamed it, cleaned the bookshelves from dust,
it smelt like a mint-conditioning comic after,
changed the bedsheets,
took all the empty cups from the shelves,
spotless clean...
but i'm telling you, if i get to see 2015's
best film *inside out by pixar i'd give you
a clear analysis on the specific points,
at the moment i have this **** of thinking
about how the optics of man
only start engaging in memory after 4 years
upon birth...
spending nine months in the waters of the womb
(imagine coal miners trapped in
perpetual coal-mine for nine months,
they'd re-enter the light of day like moles,
having to wear sunglasses for the same number
of months before the eyes adjusted) -
it's no wonder that the parts of the body
passing fluids (well, **** in the form of
diarrhoea is pigeon ****) are weak...
why the ***** i'm saying...
why the mushy pulp of the apple purée
because the oesophagus is weak too and needs
to develop like bones, become hardened,
indeed these soft tissues need to become firm
paralleled with bones, baby bones are undeveloped
in terms of how we can't walk at the beginning
but crawl... forget the drawings of darwinism
of shortened historical explanation...
our's isn't with tail and hunched spine...
we're crawling...
but the pixar film inside out i will write a detailed
analysis when i see it again...
at first i can only relate one fascination...
the way we only become to actually consciously
see aged ~4... prior to that we have no
optical impression of the world with memory...
memory and seeing only enjoin
aged ~4... prior to that all the senses are based
in the unconscious, once the senses emerge from
the unconscious, actual faculties develop,
sight develops with memory...
i could say that speech develops with sounds...
but ba ba goo goo ma ma da da is actual
gibberish to consider since we become so eloquent
after, aided by the fact that we capture sounds
with phonetic optics of letters...
i'll stick my ground,
the first symbiosis is that of sight and memory,
which also becomes a symbiosis of
sight and memorising-imagination, or memory-in-itself...
and the clash of these two symbioses
creates a paradox of what actually happened
and what happened upon re-imagining...
like i said, i could expand on the theories within
inside out, with my re-evaluation as alt. outside in,
and i can say about a 1000 child psychologists could
be spawned from this single film...
but you never know, i might even theorise further
tonight once i drink enough and get a toilet break;
and bear in mind i'm about to cross the threshold
of being awake for 24 hours, after i miscalculated
my doctor's appointment for an amitriptyline (25mg)
prescription; the depth of the film is immense,
but i think it's harsh for so many psychological
undertones to be shown t children,
i think that it's a film for adults, even though
it's rated U... and indeed, more like a U-turn in
terms of thinking about life than suitable for
the under-aged,
at first you get the early stages of child development,
by the end of the film of hopefully seeing adolescent
development, but that's cut short when
puberty obstructs sensitive sensible matters that
lead into sadomasochism in certain cases,
and in others into ****** carelessness as documented
by grooming examples in societies, like the ones
in england... or two girls today in mini-skirts with
the still cold spring nights, one ******* crouched
in an alley, the other trying to ease her on
while i walk past to finish it quickly...
i could, really could bombast you with my little
theory tool-kit... when joy becomes jealous of
sadness and wants to rob sadness of a prime memory...
the simple cutting of the umbilical chord of
being born in one place, but moving to another...
the sheer thoughtless release of tears in a classroom...
then the imaginary friend encounter...
never take short-cuts with that third cat,
third elephant, third dolphin character leading
you into the world of imagination,
the imaginary friend is actually a placebo figure in
this realm, he can't have imagined it all,
we couldn't have been the first prize pundit in it all...
he's the thief of ownership...
and then dragged into the cyst pit of those
characters real in life, celebrating your third birthday,
still blind to the world... the rainbows of life
and the darkness of the foetal mine...
the clown who's less horror but more a 5 year
student of acting reduced to cheap party tricks...
distorted not in life, but in your dreams,
as proof that you really didn't see the world
so early... you couldn't have, because if you had,
the dream world would not distort so profoundly...
and upon re-entry into the foetal position of sleep
your first 3 years are reflected in sleep...
such that when joy and sadness walked into
the realm of the imagination i thought they'd wake
the girl up by going to the cinema to watch a horror movie
like the one joy tried to block when the family
first moved to san francisco...
oh indeed the over-layering of the five crude expressions
of thought, memory and imagination...
i wonder why these chose those five...
and there was no hope among them - and hope's
triplet shapes of hope itself, love, and fear...
and when suddenly the imaginary friend dragged
the poor girl into the abyss of forgettable memories,
it dawned on me how the girl sat there holding
memories she wished to remember, a motherly
narcissism as to say: my own child...
but it felt so strange to imagine this child
holding onto memories like that, when in reality
without the five crude impressions of feelings
she would be unable to do so... this melancholic
reflection of joy suddenly dawned upon her
that the real sadness was the it too was sadness,
for if natural selection exists... so too much
cognitive selection, however dear some things are
to us... some of us have to remember
being able to give surgery, learn to drive buses,
teach mathematics... to be truly enjoined with humanity,
and not simple childish solipsists;
even as such... write poetry and weep.

Draped in boundless pride
she strolled along the streets,
the town's flamboyant prima ballerina.
Still little did the debaucher know her.
Defenceless she laid
as he spanked and clouted her,
Her vehement howling and wailing couldn't stop
the yanking of clothes.
Motionless, emotionless she laid
while he plundered and mutilated her body.
Vandalised by an uninvited visitor,
Incapable of moving her body
the ravishing ballerina reclined.
The scars he made was not on her body but deep in her soul.
That gloomy night whistled away
for the sun to flare its first ray.
'18 year old violently molested and deceased'.
Hence the prima ballerina became a mere newspaper headline.

I live next door,
To a ballerina,
I hear music all day,
And see lights on all night,

It doesn’t bother me,
For we are good friends,
I knew her forever,
Even as a child,

Sometimes I see her,
From my bedroom window,
Dancing like her life depends on it,
Only, it really does,

She moves,
With such grace,
Delicately on her toes,
As if it was easy,

She glances out her window,
Sees me staring,
Flashes a smile,
As if everything was okay,

But I too knew her too well,
To fall for that lie,
I looked at her long and hard,
And now I see why,

Beads of sweat,
Fell down her forehead,
Her legs shook,
As she did a developpe,

Her face was pained,
Strong hint of confusion,
Yet she smiled away,
As if she wasn’t hurting,

She was beautiful,
She could pass as a goddess,
But if you looked closely,
You could see she wasn’t flawless,

Her ever-so-fake smile,
Is what gave her away,
And the shine in her eyes,
Was simply the tears kept inside

Just when I thought,
It was a trick of the light,
She tripped and fell down,
Into a puddle of her own tears,

I didn’t know,
What to do,
Should I climb out my window?
Or leave her in pain?

One thought was dominant,
And it was neither of either,
I screamed just enough,
For her to hear,

She looked up,
And cried once again,
I asked her what was wrong,
Was everything okay?

She said it wasn’t,
As she walked towards her window,
And then did I see her body,
As thin as a straw,

She told me her story,
Everyone was screaming at her,
They said she was pathetic,
Useless in so many ways,

She said she agreed,
They were telling the truth,
She was too fat to be beautiful,
Too fat to dance,

That’s when it hit me,
It explained so much,
She had a disorder,
Anorexia nervosa,

I told her the truth,
While her body shook,
I shook my head and said,
“It’s going to be okay,
My little ballerina”

She smiled, and left.

When I was little my mother put me in several ballet classes in hopes to bring some grace to my stumbling gait.

I grew up walking on eggshells, wobbling to keep my balance on a tightrope that never really ended.

 My instructor pinched my thighs and shook her bony finger at me every tuesday and thursday for three and a half years.

4 am, I'm still tiptoeing around the creaks in the stairs as if anyone would notice an empty bed.

 This Christmas I came across the broken reminents of the ballerina ornaments my younger sister used to play with.

I never did master the delicate posture I was expected to adopt. My feet fell a bit too heavy, I suppose, on the ice tonight.

I'm not cold anymore, just exhausted from attempting to balance the wrong things for too long.

My life is flashing before my eyes, but all I see is a younger version of myself practicing Grand Battements on thin ice while everyone slept.

All of my dance life people told me how I would never make it
How i'm not good enough
How I don't have a dancer body
How i'm not graceful enough
But I didn't care what others thought
Dance was my escape
Dancing was all I cared about
It was all I could think about
Their words and the struggle I had to go through only made me stronger as a dancer
It made me who I am today
A  BLACK  BALLERINA
And I stand for every other black ballerina out there
- Your weakness can be your  greatest  *strength

When we were young,
Before broken by age
We danced our grand pas de deux,
Upon life's stage
Our plie's were graceful
Many grand pas, we danced
And I, never knowing,
A solo I chanced
I thought I'd always,
Be your danseus
I'd hoped for no other ballerina,
You'd have a use
You did glissade
Into my heart
But I see I've danced solo,
From the start
Pas de waltz en tournant, alone
My dance now
Since your grand jete, from my side
This ballerina, will take her bow
And for the final time,
The curtain closes
But for this ballerina,
There are
No roses

little missy mouse she just long to be a little ballerina
for all the world to see'
she took a trip  to russia far across the sea
to become a dancer with a ballet company.
she packed up her tutu and tiara too
to be a ballet dancer and make her dreams come true.

she praticed all her moves and spiining on her feet
trained every single day till her training was complete
now her time had come to join a company .
and a ballerina now at last would be

she began to dance like she never danced before
little spins and pirouttes the crowd all shouted more
they stood on there feet now a star was she
a famous ballet star just like she longed to be

I live next door,
To a ballerina,
I hear music all day,
And see lights on all night,

It doesn’t bother me,
For we are good friends,
I knew her forever,
Even as a child,

Sometimes I see her,
From my bedroom window,
Dancing like her life depends on it,
Only, it really does,

She moves,
With such grace,
Delicately on her toes,
As if it was easy,

She glances out her window,
Sees me staring,
Flashes a smile,
As if everything was okay,

But I too knew her too well,
To fall for that lie,
I looked at her long and hard,
And now I see why,

Beads of sweat,
Fell down her forehead,
Her legs shook,
As she did a developpe,

Her face was pained,
Strong hint of confusion,
Yet she smiled away,
As if she wasn’t hurting,

She was beautiful,
She could pass as a goddess,
But if you looked closely,
You could see she wasn’t flawless,

Her ever-so-fake smile,
Is what gave her away,
And the shine in her eyes,
Was simply the tears kept inside

Just when I thought,
It was a trick of the light,
She tripped and fell down,
Into a puddle of her own tears,

I didn’t know,
What to do,
Should I climb out my window?
Or leave her in pain?

One thought was dominant,
And it was neither of either,
I screamed just enough,
For her to hear,

She looked up,
And cried once again,
I asked her what was wrong,
Was everything okay?

She said it wasn’t,
As she walked towards her window,
And then did I see her body,
As thin as a straw,

She told me her story,
Everyone was screaming at her,
They said she was pathetic,
Useless in so many ways,

She said she agreed,
They were telling the truth,
She was too fat to be beautiful,
Too fat to dance,

That’s when it hit me,
It explained so much,
She had a disorder,
Anorexia nervosa,

I told her the truth,
While her body shook,
I shook my head and said,
“It’s going to be okay,
My little ballerina”

She smiled, and left.