you are my lifeline
in time with time
quickstep tango
Russian roulette
African mango
one will get you high
just one
thread
piece of string
hanging
just one

Acknowledge the drum's whisper.
Yield to its velvet
Nudge. Cut a slow air-
Curve. Then dip (hip to hip):
Sway, swing, pedantically
Poise. Now recover,
Converting the coda
To prelude of sway-swing-
Recover.
              Acknowledge
The drum-crack's alacrity -
Acrid exactitude -
Catch it, then slacken,
Then catch as cat catches
Rat. Trace your graph:
Loop, ellipse. Skirt an air-wall
To bend it and break it -
Thus - so -
As the drum speaks!

Tango on a tightrope
Argentine Cross vibrating the line
like the strings of a Latin guitar
playing our song
only a spider’s web for a net
if we fall

Waltz on a wall top thirty stories high
our story tops them all
traffic below doesn’t even see
top hat and tails, silk gown
cocktails in our hands
Fred and Ginger sit it out to watch

Rumba on a rope bridge
hips sway in time
with the windblown span
gliding past missing boards
waterfall below shouts up to us
can’t make out what it says

Paso Doble on a plane
faux bullfight on a wing
Matador and his scarlet cape
pose and sweep
turbulence tilts the dance floor
ten thousand feet to the ground

Quickstep in the quicksand
feet so light in rapid step
no time to sink
flow across the surface
to syncopated beats
shoes left stuck to the floor

steps we mastered long ago

now we glissade and sweep
only to the rhythm of us
most challenging of all dances
and most natural of movements
always in step
dancing on the edge of our hearts

The waltz is almost over
together on our toes
today we dance the quickstep
in depths of winter's throes
that's how it goes-
one season to another.

We tried the bossa nova
discovering new steps
a pas de deux by moonlight
united in our quest
for what was best-
from one year to another.




copyright © Caroline Grace 2012

It's at times like this when I feel ten under par
when I've got **** all to show for
this life lived,
so far and it has been so far and it seems like so long and
it feels like I've lived those sad words in a song but if
I've been there and done it, I've gone there alone,no one to hold hands with,no place to call home,
and it's ten under par for this ******* up old star
reissued and fused like some lamp you once used but the filament broke,
went up in smoke with the dreams I once spoke of in the settlement nights when the break out of fights always broke before dawn,
you can pour scorn and you do,like the sky pours out blue on the blue and what else can I do but feel down,down in outdown among the fallen and shattered and by the cold winds we're scattered until we're all blown away,and you don't have to see what you don't have to pay for,the day's always brighter without me there to blight it,don't fight what you don't have to know,let me go I won't blame you,disrespect you or shame you,the public has a right to be free of the me within you and I am within man,
the profit,the loss and the don't give a toss,we've all seen it,been it,sleep and we dream it.
Ten under par
i know it so well
a quickstep to the right
a quickstep and a slip into hell,
cut me in half and dip me in tar
put up a sign that says
Ten under par.

she can never wear ****** white, she can never wear
that moral pregnancy - and i don't see why this
hasn't been established as a fetish
awaiting the nearest mongol...
            i don't know why it exists
in the first place...
     i skipped through R. Brautigan
and left him drinking and desperate,
ig  desperate when i see a bottle
of whiskey's shrinking girth
in the bottle... don't get me wrong,
i adore the poetry, but autobiographies
always led me to skim-read some
examples... i own a need for such
excuses because i feel i'll be one of them.
it's not a case of sadness being written down...
the sad part is writing an autobiography
as your life takes shape...
                     the sad part is
   an autobiography that's written parallel
to a "life", you wear a necktie and a
pair of moccasins and a silk robe...
                     fo' da' sho' -
    and never the shove or shovel to be the first
in line... because that matters: let the idiots
through, i don't mind lighthearted
entertainment before i board the bus...
             when you apply diacritical indicators
you get to worry about orthography...
when you don't apply them?
   you get quickstep spelling...
                   you get incorporating the digital
Amazon rainforest shrunk to a toothpick
or an A4 sized paper, later rolled into a cigar
by Castro.
                           but you know what really bothers me?
listening to bob marley and reading pashtun
poetry... it's Afghan and an antidote to Rumi...
no (so-called) "feminists" cite pashtun...
              don't get prickly proud on me having
     the ability to cite obscure cultural ref. points...
bob's bob, the end.
    what? damian or stephen or ziggy too?
                        well, the more the merrier.
                 but these so-called feminists are never overheard
citing pashtun women...
            women not citing women... tragic...
      i guess the two can't relate...
if you forgot what an Afghani woman looks like...
kinda like a Pakistani woman, before
the Mongol fiddled about with a ******* violin...
       pretty? sure... maybe John Smith Sargent Mj.
knew about
        it, when he ****** W into Afghanistan,
   protective of the truth about the "burning bush's"
original message aimed at Abraham:
circumcise him!
           Abraham... you what? **** him?
burning bush: circumcise him!
        well, **** me, what a desirable revision!
now we'll forever crave the need for ******* cushions!
  who said kangaroo pouch isn't soft enough?
      kangaroo in a boxing ring: bucktooth combo
punched out... and everyone huh?!.
               but feminists never cite these women...
i'm a quasi-exile, or at least my parents are,
i didn't exactly wish to live on these isles...
but then again jean-paul zee deux ******
everything before i even got the cameo role in
the film: history of the world.
               that's basically me ******* down
an alley named after him, every time i rekindle
originating in that ol' stockpile of garbage...
   but at least the e.u. will improve the roads...
               we might finally get an artery's worth
of autobahn concrete connecting Cracow
and Katowice... you never know... might be a case
of walking on water...
               but to be honest i don't mind
that she can't wear ****** white...
i don't mind she had 20 ****** partners before
she decided to milk me... it's the lying...
lying becomes much worse than the act itself...
     i'd prefer to know she was a ***** *****...
what i don't like is this faking of childhood,
this innocence-sprechen antics....
     it's like reacting to a flu - you get all
dizzy and juggernaut-sinking obnoxious...
    because the story goes: the truth liberates
you from being an enforced thespian...
                 no one wants to be an actor
forcefully... no one...
                         esp. if they're not getting paid
for pretence...
      the truth is at least a mobilising enforcement,
you know you've been given a faulty
refrigerator, but that means you're utilising
an awareness of possessing a faulty refrigerator...
     being lied to... you get utopic inhibitions
  thinking it's not half-of-the-story,
when it actually is.
             that's what's inherent in *** with prostitutes...
        no inhibitions... we're square,
proofread countless times, no secrets, just two naked bodies.
it's when people take to enforcing wearing
Gucci on their psyche... that **** is worse
than donning a strap-on in a lycra gimp-suit.
           but such is the force of the pashtun landlays...
you react to them like so...
            i choreograph them above the haiku,
even though they're twinned,
like some village in Lichenstein (liochestein,
a googlewhack) - Liechtenstein -
twinned to a village in scotland -
               obviously the there's no innuendo
because both originated in deemed obscurity...
       they did much injustice to Kafka given the small
print, and overdid the justice done with
    printing oversized Bukowski...
but then there's a Sunday newspaper to look forward to,
which will evidently make the Monday print
a bit... slim.
                     never mind... a great phrase from
the landays is little horror, or being a woman in her
20s being betrothed to a man-child aged prior to
kicking things off with puberty...
  and dear ol' me, why don't feminists even take a second
to look at the women talking in Afghanistan?
    sure, the veil puts them off immediately...
       women talk with their genitals and men talk ******...
as was always the case...
    i am, currently talking as if i were an ******...
and Alice over here has no tongue,
                except the one that replicates oyster salivation...
as some might crudely put it.
         and then there's Mallarmé.... ugh...
                     pisshead compatriot Poe... and Baudelaire...
honestly... we have just begun writing
       the most pristine of poker sessions...
i tell you and fake how literate i am, or illiterate,
or with an adequate or with an inadequate diet of literature,
and you poker me, and vice versa,
       because by the time a Tuesday newspaper comes along,
we'll both be brooding with angst, wishing we
could only possibly be bored.

Dance Lessons

I signed up for dance lessons
perhaps more because I was lonely
than the desire to learn dance.
She had been gone so long
and the quietness of the house
was getting to be more than
I could stand.
I suppose I was frightened
I had not mixed socially for many years.
But I collected all my courage
and went to the small studio
on the third floor of a walk up building.
I was not prepared for the teacher
she was beautiful close to my age.
so graceful like a swan.
Her hair tight to her head
almost like a ballerina.
She taught me the waltz.
But not like a dance
she took beautiful waltz poses
smiling so lovely
as she gazed upward
to an imaginary  audience.
The music so soft and smooth
I found something at last
that made me  happy
for the first time since –well
..for a long time.
She saw I had an aptitude for dance
and spent time teaching me
the rumba, cha cha, and quickstep andTango.
It was when she danced the Tango with me
that I knew I was in love with her.
I felt as though she
was making love to me in dance.
One night she had me stay
and we drank a little glass of wine.
She said how come you never remarried.
You are a very attractive man.
I said because I never found anyone
who I could fall in love with.
I had a special one for twenty years.
I don’t think it comes like that twice
in a lifetime.
I was lucky to have it just once.
She smiled and held my hand.
Don’t you ever get lonely
being on your own.
I said
….Yes
She leaned forward and kissed me softly.
Are you lonely now she whispered?
I breathed quietly…….Yes .

A year later

They played a beautiful waltz at our wedding
and she led me around the floor
as the beautiful music lilted.
She whispered I love my dance partner.
I said I love my teacher.
I was now teaching
beginners class the dance studio.
I don’t think I have ever realized
I could be this happy again
And she loved me as much as I loved her.
And I would dance with her
for the rest of my lifetime.

The wolves stepped from the wood
Padfoot, quickstep, under ****** moon
Their mouths agape and yawning
Tongues lolling to steam the air
Eyes yellow and gold
The first wolf that had ever walked
Swallowed a portion of the sun
And they have been hoarding fire
Inside them ever since
And these wolves, from the darkening wood
With their misted fur backs
Twitching ears and slow careful steps
They lift their heads in one drawn-out moment
Speak with one voice
A voice that echoes like man
That lilts with arrogance not of wolf
To say that the world was raining blood.
The sun
The moon
They heard the wrongness of that voice
Saw the guns pointed at weeping muzzles
And they heeded
Noise shattered the ever-night
Sunlight averts her eyes
A moon crimson and shameful
The sky exploded in death
The woods grew darker

in my quickstep i dodge pessimistic paranoia,
to make a B-line with a convincing smile
not to show you my insecurities,
since three nights dog tired

i search your listlessness, those detoured eyes,
trampoline thoughts of yours
elsewhere
which i innocently ask you where
they are, you say -in explaining-
  
    (as if to some enforcement officer or
     probationary agent in an interrogation room,
     a single naked bulb dangling in shadows,
     save for teeth and baritone accusations)

-in explaining-
you are weary .. "fati~gay" you say -having
worked out
(your *****' leisure given away,
in my head i say...
to someone else yesterday, last night...)
today-

i fix my carnivorous gravitation
on carnage with our usual
routine of euro-**** or latins
    ripped from torrents of unknown webs
that our downtown pal gifts us
regularly, having now
figured out our tastes and styles
of types of boys
or men we salivate to... he figured it
somehow

i force myself to shoot,
unload my bullets with a glass *****
inside - as i grip the handle like a ride -
my vices escape with the voices inflated,
questions to understand you
muffled by choice, not getting any
closer to...

in the release, no answers,
only music of muscles and erections
emitted from the Magnavox's shrills...
my hole seems to still need
to be filled

where once i was frequented
by the real-deal holy-meal
of your beautiful member; both of us
silencing our ordeals
with slumber now
and surgery with sugary
well-wishes

kisses don't do it for me any longer

since your energy's spent
elsewhere

(i don't seek it out
-why, or who, or even
when -did you have the time to spend?
in between the calls checking in)

it's an empty ******
when
the one you love has his
when
you rinse off the boy butter
to the noise of amateur directed scenes
Brazilians in their jungle brilliance
or the cocoa skinned of Ipanema, Egypt,
or some ******' place
where anything
and everything’s
hung black...

i don’t care if this angers you,
i know you're reading it now.

still, it's a restless sleep
when i can't stop wondering
if your dysfunction is
caused by me...
     that i'm the reason why
you disappear to complete yourself
Meet your needs
Elsewhere...

****** Heels

Streetwalker quickstep
In knee highs
Click clack tap tap
On the fly
Her cacophony echoes
Down the night’s hollow alley
Cat caught by black
Cadillac
Hurry on in
That pimped out coffin
Streetwalker
Quick
Steps.

We all face uncertainty
in these uncertain times
some face it stoically
some make up rhymes,

undecided?
I should be
if the world revolves
around you and
not around me,
see,
I'm certain
that's a rhyme
in an otherwise
uncertain time.

The clock will go forward soon
I'll take a quickstep back
might even try the foxtrot
and I'll be an 'alright Jack'

but it's still uncertain
the crystal ball is not tuned in
the moon's in the house of a neighbour
and my patience is wearing quite thin.

Streetwalker quickstep
In knee highs
Click clack tap tap
On the fly
Her cacophony echoes
Down the night’s hollow alley
Cat caught by black
Cadillac
Hurry on in
That pimped out coffin
Streetwalker
Quick
Steps.

your mind
is merely dancing skeletons
in the dark
take comfort
in the quickstep
and know that these
shackles will break
and you will dance upon
the heavy dew grass
again

It’s so good to see you
wow, your scarf looks great!
I’d like to smear lipstick
all over that face

We share our updates
and quickstep around
the last time we met
like a bag on the ground

How’s your husband?
how’s your wife?
tell me, what you regret
most in this life?

She leans in closer
whispering secrets
of times, of places, of phantoms
she's been with

We reverb, hollow shapes and sounds
remind me, what you like?
as she touches my hand

Your electric smile
those puce, cidery lips
your tongues natural flare
for unfathomable tricks
that ethereal pause
as the universe blows
stilted, coarse breaths, then you go

The secret, she whispered, who knows if it’s true
'there’s a ring on my finger, but it’s always been you'