Program for The Dance Poem by Ed Roberson

1.


He turned
so fast he
wound
the spirals of his arms
tight
into a slap
in the face

he beat himself to death
dancing

he would fall
then get right —
back up
to some music
he heard
all by himself
no one to

help

listen


2. Program


We tune
taking in hand
the remote as partner
to the news.

We turn
twirling the tit
of the dial in touch to touch
between our fingers.

We feel ourselves
both touch and button
coming on.
Or is it music we two

pick up step
to that times
happening into
receiving line?


3. table. . .


Tied to a table
top the table tilted up
right so
he hung by his ankles,
he filled from
a bucket on the floor at his head
the cup at his feet
overhead with a spoon,
and when it filled,
then an attendant emptied
cup back
into bucket,

and he began again
doing the senseless hanging
sit ups like
prayer in the morning
naked,
his throat cut
draining the words
into the bucket
from

which he delivered
the blood of his songs
into
the cup of heaven,
his feet,
in
steps


4. By The Rivers of . .


The boys came in the house
home from day camp
that summer
they were stopped
so many feet into their running
through the door
made to meet the guests
required of to sing
what they had done today
They sang of being taught though
they thought they knew
already how to swim

Asked if they liked it
the youngest explained that
what he liked the best
was to come in
through the top door of the water
into the city
underneath the pool He said
he saw long lights
he liked people made funny faces
and were flying.

I am the guest I come in
through the top door of the water
4 to 12 for the public
aquarium
I'm a diver
tankman to porpoises, moray eels,
the lightning
cloud of neon tetras at my hand
I midwife the anaconda
— all 60
plastic wrap egg babies —
making a living living in a vision
city
of living cubes of water

door to door.


Door to door
tank displays
on my shift don't get visited
by out of tank appearances
in their own likeness hiding
gifts
of transcendence and wisdom
Rather than glory —
tubes and cylinders trailing
old air poor
disguise flippers for wings
and gifts no more

than of care and feeding.


Though I'm trained to their pH's and oxygen
levels this
is a lay practice of my own
care and feeding They live in
a timeless solution of their histories
the living broth of their other
lives, their dead, their brothers I find
something familial
familiar in these small squares
these boxes buried in the public air
of the aquarium,
the slave atlantic's water,

blocked each into a plot
water is one
with its everywhere:
the how many lost of the all of us
brought here —
in my wandering
going in door to door into
the gathered ecologies keeping
a watch out for the shark,
in what I bring in this extra grace
said from some black thing
to this fare
— get their care and feeding


as if some hour
in all employment living to give it
goes to their loss
where without that sorry
new york minute's
pause at ourselves in this country we lose
our colors the gray side of money
that pale
of ghosts flying folds on our chests,
and we float up
fattened by work
that is emptied of the gain
back of our lives.

They come from in between things
through as though
between things shines a door we sing
of the orisha
I hear a singing on the other side
of a door
singing going on behind the tanks
heard on the public floor
people invisibly at work
on public display
their aquarium parading the corps
we've decorated as gods thousands
of years unseen

that morning we woke when we had lost
the attempt all our supplies everything
but our lives washed down
the river left in a puddle
a fish we only had to dish up
out of its own
carapace a shelled catfish
Plecostomus and here it was
I see now recognize
one of my samples I care for
in this exhibit
all that kept me

alive 'til we reached a village.


Come back in from my own
expeditions out I know
the diving aboard landing of
the plane
made into the glittering night waters
that are
the city home

searching the long waving light refraction
for its drawing of
that African's face.



But the boys they'll grow up
in what only is a difference
in this country as if
starting the exhibit at a different door
changed the subject:
their mother white like many's
somewhere in our people here,
their African
black like a many's in
our American peoples)
father came over
long after

the middle passage on a plane
to school
A whole new subject here.
But we sit down

to Miles to Louis Armstrong
over dinner
and later a little Lou Donaldson
gets us
dancing our stuff.


5. seat


The erased unshined polish
of a board
that is a mind
unmet
nor chaired into a seat
of any solving,
gray with no answers


the slate smoothness of the cities' street
education


That moving standing still
we learn
that rest is hanging on no seat
keeping the strap
and loop's flow open
from around your neck
your foot out of the trap


The loss of grace complaint
forgets we find footing
accomplishment in that


6. Dance, for the Balance of New Mexico


We had driven until the land rover was in danger
of never being upright again at this height.

The cloud came through the window on the driver
side and out the passenger and stopped,

its center on the seat between.

To go further would have been to carry
black clown from Second Mesa's Butterfly Dance,

his foggy, white stripes floating ash
across the blackened rocks

naked from a fire his hardened body

We could hear the land rover strain, his screaming
laughter just before he'd leap through a complete

standing somersault, and we would halt
and float the truck for that moment he was air

in a sweated cloud of fear until he touched
the balance to the ground and put us down.


7. Flamenco Goyasques


We all have
women we were born of


We all were dragged out &
lined up against the sky


Know that
Somebody here stood beside you


You put up your hands & you die


. . . . . . . . . . . .





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