As his feet moved even faster, and he twirled and whirled and cantered across the stage, it was as if he existed in an indeterminate space - blinded by the footlights, deafened by the orchestra, absorbed in his own rumbustious choreography. Beyond the pit, in the anonymous darkness, the audience rippled and flared appreciatively in response. So he danced on until, with a final rapturous gesture of his outstretched arms, he plunged to earth as dizzy as a snowflake. And waited.

The silence shifted. The soft rumble of engine noise played softly in the background, while the chain-link fence rattled in the squall which blew fresh off the harbour. He opened his eyes and watched the cars crawling across the overbridge above him; the empty basketball court littered with yesterday’s snack papers lay in shadow. In the middle distance, a familiar figure walked briskly towards him.

‘Matthew! Matthew! You come here this secon’ or I’ll whip your **** right off, already.’
‘Yes, Auntie.’
‘What you doin’ tryna waste good time?’
‘Nothin’, Auntie.’
‘Ain’t that the truth, boy.’

As he stooped to gather up his satchel, Matthew saw out of the corner of his eye the concertmaster lower his instrument, incline his head, and begin to tap his music stand with his bow. From the balconies the first of a thousand rose petals began to fall with the evening rain, the applause thundered while the lightning clapped, and there in the gods stood his mother waving and blowing kisses at him, as he followed his aunt down East Street towards home.

This depressive choreography
                                     of flames
                                     f     i      k     r     n
                                         l    c      e     i     g
consumed in the geography
                                 of bodies
                                 b   i   c   k   e   r   i   n   g
                              
Tongue's embers  licking  
                  the innocent cheek
words like poniards
                     P   R   I   C   K   I   N   G
leaving this dance at its
                                                          piqu­e

Now left  a  s m o u l d e r i n g
             soloist on the stage
                            a dance so sobering
                                     watch this fire's rampage

burn his own pyre
              I gave into the rage
burn his own desire
             another illegible page
tossed to fuel the bellowing fire
              the end of our golden age

He reached his fingers to the stars
willed his legs to dance
  forced his head so far back
   that in the bow of his body
    the bridge of his dance
     allowed particles of flaring sunlight
      little faeries of elation
       to traverse to the other side

      He saw his lean lithe body
     pirouette and position,
    ran screaming from one side to the next
   in a perpetual wish to catch
  that last step, that last grand
move, to capture small smiles
for infinity in his psyche

He said adieu to his last dance;
  farewell to the music
   only his ears could capture,
    goodbye to a world of ballet
     without him, his choreography
      no longer
       visible, but still resonating
        in this time and space where
         once he moved.

A well-rehearsed dance,
the waltzing waitress tosses The Times
on table 1 as if she’ll actually finish
the Sunday crossword this morning.
She won’t.

Grease lined lights flicker on one
by one.
Like spotlights on a stage.
It’s show time.

Twostepping while taking down chairs,
she flows to the rhythm of ritual,
across a worn checkered dancefloor.
No applause.

In a dining room of Astaire’s and Rogers
she is the coffee choreographer.  
Pirouetting to the ***,
then a sidestep, quick! Quick!
Slow.

Warming up now, she stretches.
Switching on the metal machinery.
It grinds and growls as if it prefers
decaf.

Rings from rusted bells
hanging from the door chime
to the beat. This is her
cue.

My walls will cave in (just like placards stacked up horizontally fall back with the wind) along with every wave of anxiety-
Right then, I will fall short of words, or rather lose the intelligence of speaking-
Goosebumps, butterflies, shivers and my heart dipping into the cold Pacific won't just be defense mechanisms.
My heart will appear to jolt awake and then dead repeatedly by the society I put myself in;
I will feel electricity running around in my veins, often sparking out of my eyes as the salty tears that trigger short circuits
The ones they say could be caused by the heat-
Indeed- but it's also the cold, the wind, rain and the snow
Words like unknown, unforeseen and anonymous manifesting and getting under my skin- make my jaws quiver and heart dip.

Often my gut nudges me to stand and to speak and to, for once, not fear an omen before I deliver a speech,
But when I speak, though my mouth moves to enunciate what I remembered from the paper,
And as I attempt to collect and reflect my confidence through my features,
My fingers tremble as I try to fit them into my fists behind my back-
These legs shiver behind the pedestal, hidden under slacks.
For people think these mere trifles shouldn't ******* the silhouette that I bear,
Fear of the unknown? Don't be scared, scared!
My nerve ends nervously make my fingers dance as I attempt to provide them a temporary occupation-
'Cross your fingers, close your fists,
Pretend to text, you're better than this.'

So dear me, oh dear me I am sorry-
I am sorry for constantly holding you back;
Sorry for all the chances I did not let you take, all because
I sometimes tend to diverge my faults out as through a prism,
And have always been someone who can never jeopardize her pursuit for perfection.

Sorry, for the seeds of my anxiety have given birth to the roots of my skepticism-
For I paint doubt over every pretty scenery you etch in my mind,
My inhibitions and myself, thinking things over, rewind, rewind.

If I were Rapunzel my anxiety would be the tower that holds me encapsulated- a hostage;
With no demands whatsoever, only a plain, ruthless, endless need to cause damage.

angry men who do not know I do not have a dollar or a cig to spare. Ugly irrefutable contagion-handed howlers. Angry mischievous heathens that pantomime on 6:00a.m. sidewalk, Wicker Park gallow stop-sign, choreographed gutter-punk drunk walk. And of all he wants and could ever want splits down his gooey membrane brain in the outline of a noun shaped fragment of a clause, "Couldja spare 80¢ for the train," but of course I don't spare on the ellipsis or the period. Semi-colons I won't! My rubber-bottomed leather boots lash out, heavy scraping sounds trail this mirrored shadow half an angle behind me.

*****!! Blonde framed sunglasses from American Apparel, a gift from my sister in a folded Ray-Ban case is scattered on last nights bedroom floor, my girlfriend has certainly not noticed, the gloom-coated morning sun spray has not noticed; but I have unzipped a fissure in the ocular lens. My heart skips a beat. Her bedroom might as well have swallowed them whole. Now the house can halt and have the shade, swaying in Spring air in 10:22a.m. shadows. The aviator himself Howard Hughes would strike me with his 488 aircraft. Edwin Starr in his invincible sinister calypso of War would turn me round. I was sturdy as a rock until I began to forget my forgottens. These unknown unknowns I knew I needed. I'm over a quarter-century on to noon going nowhere- and quite blindly.

But then, still she could stand upright and find me. Her neck crooked, looking onward through the East, the gristly roots of rhubarb buried in her searching fingernails. She's threaded worse, and of course if I could just tell her- this is the kind of nursing which requires acute temperament and flexibility. I am thus on a journey to strike nonsense and fear from the idiotic vocabulary that put this nonsense in my head. Split through me like a butter knife into my apotropaic. Perhaps tar water could cure my ails. If not, certainly a sliver of vanilla would set me straight. Or if could just rain rain rain all day, then I'd make do without, but she is at school. My pistons are racked and nervous, and I'm not going anywhere but my rucksack stoop. I am camped in midwestern Spring soup. Fog, rain, and shade. The nightmare of day.