Drowning in the Tune

Drowning in the Tune

The bright-coloured Dancer twists and gyrates,
Polishing the sheen of the marble-cloud floor ,
A spiral of glee in a spring/summer passage
Pivoting past the unseeing witness
Standing oblivious, blocking his path.
He crouches low beneath the fell ceiling,
Testicles sweeping the hard cold ground,
His breasts swinging as shoulders lead them
And the smile on the face brings no watchers joy
Swamped by eyes that see forever.

No words, no fate, no liberty yet,
Just eat and shit and sleep for a while
Biding and waiting for life to begin.
Take in, expel, and recover my strength,
A delicate balance between life and death.
Eat such a lot and excrete just a little
Then sleep once again while I measure the scales.

And sometimes I laugh at the May-hued Dancer
Spinning unseen through the galaxy-wide hall,
Streaming his ribbons and calling me onward
To join in the dance by taking his hand,
And lose myself in the joys of the music
Uncaring of where the Dancer may lead

I dance along with the spring-coloured Dancer,
The light in my eyes as each new day dawns,
And hide in the dark wishing he'd leave me
When the horrors of childhood stand at my door.
Whatever I choose his steps still continue
Pulling me forward to share in the dance.

Crouched low once more, the Dancer progresses
Twisting his steps to turn this way and that
Drawing strange patterns and runes of dark secrets
In silent footsteps on a life-cluttered floor,
Still barely seen by the fantastic phantoms
Whose fear of the dance binds the heart to the past.

Ahead the hallway splits and divides
Leading the dance along myriad ways,
A cloud of paths for the Dancer to choose from
Tying in passing the great knot of now,
Trailing behind a river of yesterdays
Dancing too, over memory's rocks
Twisting and splashing into clandestine pools
Where the Dancer's true purpose is hidden from view.

The Dancer giggles when he sees my confusion
And calls out a name I never will hear,
Leading a quadrille of fate and the muses,
Waltzing with demons he's woken within me
Whose laughter berates me drowning the tune.

Another has joined me sharing my steps,
We make our own music and dance to our song,
The Tango that grips us shatters the mirrors
Showing the others who dance just like us.
Moving faster than the Dancer can follow
Brightly we trample him under our feet
Until our music fails and we stumble and stutter
We break step and apart in the silence.
The Dancer laughs in his black-patterned gown,
And dances between us in furious glee.

And near the end of my dance
I weary, growing grey and gaunt
Yesterday's beats have taken my all
My dance is done
But the fucking harlequin-bedecked Dancer
Maintains a furious pace
Not thinking
Not caring
Grinding me down
Drowning me in a tune I cannot hear.