Static crackling ecstatically; manic pop
Transistor hissing and spitting; sideboard atop
                                      First when there’s nothing…
                                      But a slow glowing dream…

Pirouette such as whirling dervish makes
Adolescent prancer twirls; leg warmer fakes
                                      All alone I have cried…
                                      Silent tears full of pride…

Breathless incantation; future forged in dance
Performance fascination; leap upon the chance
                                      What a feeling...
                                      Bein’s believing…

Neon flashes bedeck wrists and bonce
Peers laughter flash like fire; a ponce
                                      Take your passion…
                                      And make it happen…

The music shields, deflects. Antacid; taunts abate
Rhyhmic dreamer energized; blind to all the hate
                                      Pictures come alive…
                                      You can dance right through your life…



As Bergen-Belsen ghost yet still aware
Lost dreamer segues silently on fetid air
                                       Bruised and battered, I couldn’t tell what I felt…
                                       I am unrecognizable to myself…

Shuffling as garish Geisha; white but not with paint
Breathless as fifties bombshell; heaving sick and feint
                                      At night I could hear the blood in my veins…
                                      It was black and whispering as the rain…

With steel partner; straight firm and slim of hip
Rigid in rigor’d waltz; moving labouredly with drip
                                      I walked the avenue, ‘til my legs felt like stone…
                                      I heard the voices of friends, vanished and gone…

Faithless rusting engine combusts toxic blood
Failing sack of sinew lies where dancer stood
                                      Night has fallen, I’m lyin’ awake…
                                      I can feel myself fading away…

Monotone white noise; assuring beep
Dancer dreams in endless sleep
                                     There was a time when men were kind…
                                     There was a time when love was blind…

©pofacedpoetry (Billy Reynard-Bowness – 2018 – All rights reserved)

Acknowledgements:

1. Flashdance… what a Feeling (1983 – Giorgio Moroder, Keith Forsey & Irene Cara)
2. The Streets of Philadelphia (1993 – Bruce Springsteen)
3. I Dreamed a Dream (Les Miserables – Claude Michel Schonberg, Herbert Kretzmer & Alain Boubil)

Why you got those boots on your feet
Are you the wandering jingle jangler
That heeled high feeling easy dreamer
Lending ears to become the audience
Marking antonyms like Julius Caesar
Trying to rise before the failures fall
Sublimely for the mad beauty of it all
In desperate dreams of the final curtain
Draping the fading drama in the folds
The weatherman never read the script
And left his quill on the top of the hill
When Romeo betrayed Juliet to the fool
Stealing his chance of everlasting fame
Casting shadows before his own naming
Everything in the lies of playing games.
At least that’s why he sold himself again
For *** and drudgery’s rotting role play
Once for the money and twice to show
That charity begins when gambling ends
Throwing dice at the shaming of the true
Believers in the obviously innocent song
That sang itself to deaths other oblivion
Dwelling inside the flickering footlights
Burning soles who tread the dollar less way
To stage their very own beautiful demise
Before a paying and praying audience
There’s no business like the dying business
That’s the dumb an’ smart career move  
As death consumes all; here and ever after
The three ring circus hits the super highway
To heavenly pay days in the after math
That stole the souls of the leading actors
Wasn’t that just the smart career move
To die happily on the wings of disaster
Farewell sweet prince an’ princesses
May flights of angels love your music.

Leaves, sticks, and seeds make up this six foot stalk.
Oh, how she blooms before the flashing lights!
Leaving men and women with a stunned gawk.
Oh, you cause the seeds of your kind at night,
to dream of heights they won't reach; how sadly
try the delusional. But in all kin,
is imprinted least a scar on their psyches.
Sacrificial offer in porcelain
is ritually performed by some daily.
If not for fame, glory, or money, then
to mirror fashion people's ideal beauty.
A cyclic mental disease that won't end.
Shhh.. Here she comes! The first, but not the least.
An appetizer for the famine feast!