#choreography
The road unraveled like a ribbon
From some unseen, revolving spool.
I set my face to the horizon,
A student in a stubborn school
Who thought the only holy motion
Was thrusting toward a distant goal,
A straight-line flight of pure devotion
To satisfy the marching soul.
I walked. The mile-marks fell like hours.
I walked until the sun became
A copper disk through golden showers
Of dust that spelled a holy name.
And then---a stumble. Not a turning
Of will, but just a shift of stone.
And yet I felt the curious burning
Of one who walks, but not alone.
For in the lurch, the wobble, swaying,
The counter-step, the little slide,
A backward foot was softly playing
A part no forward pace could hide.
It pulled the earth, it traced a crescent,
It drew a breath I didn’t know
Was needed in the endless present
To let the forward motion grow.
I saw a line of pilgrims weaving,
Not one of them a faultless guide.
Some staggered, laughed, or paused, believing
The path was wide, and not a stride
Was wasted. Even those retreating
Were crafting with peculiar grace
A pattern that the steps repeating
Could never, in their sameness, trace.
“Step back,” they sang, “to learn the measure.
Step back, and feel the pressure shift.
The backward step contains a treasure:
It is the dancer’s holy gift.
It is the wind-up, the gathering,
The bow pulled taut before the tune,
The inhale that precedes the blathering
Of trumpets underneath the moon.”
I watched a child retreat from morning,
Scoop up a stone the forward pace
Had missed, then spin with sudden, dawning
Delight upon her former place.
She held the stone up to the brightness,
A backward-gleaned, exquisite thing,
And then she ran with doubled lightness
To show the find, and laugh, and sing.
I saw a mother, old and bending,
Step back to kiss a fallen son,
And in that backward gesture, mending
What forward years had left undone.
I saw a friend retrace the gravel
To lace the shoe a comrade lost,
And understood: we all unravel
The forward path at backward cost,
And yet the fabric grows the stronger,
The pattern richer where we tread,
Because the road extends far longer
Through every backward, gentle thread.
Now when the dust of progress chokes me,
And zealot-Forward shouts his creed,
A backward step, a pause, evokes me
To plant and water a new seed.
Not regression---no, a deep returning
To find what linear haste let fall,
A pivot in the constant yearning
That makes the dance a dance at all.
So if you see me stepping oddly---
A little back, a sideways glide---
Know I am praising, high and godly,
The full rotation, not the ride.
The dance is not a launched arrow,
Not even a road that runs from home;
It is a field where all steps harrow,
But none are lost in loam.
May 2
May 2, 2026 at 3:02 PM UTC
_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._
Sep 4, 2019
Sep 4, 2019 at 10:29 PM UTC
_I'll dance for you
but you won't see my body moving
you'll just see my pain flowing_
Jan 23, 2019
Jan 23, 2019 at 9:11 AM UTC
#
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
#
Aug 15, 2018
Aug 15, 2018 at 10:52 AM UTC
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.
Apr 13, 2017
Apr 13, 2017 at 5:50 AM UTC
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.
Oct 14, 2016
Oct 14, 2016 at 10:09 AM UTC
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.
Aug 5, 2016
Aug 5, 2016 at 9:05 AM UTC
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.
Apr 30, 2014
Apr 30, 2014 at 5:54 PM UTC