Dance Poems

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
...

But in the Wine-presses the human grapes sing not nor dance:
They howl and writhe in shoals of torment, in fierce flames consuming,
In chains of iron and in dungeons circled with ceaseless fires,
In pits and dens and shades of death, in shapes of torment and woe:
...

Dance little baby, dance up high,
Never mind baby, mother is by;
Crow and caper, caper and crow,
There little baby, there you go;
...

For the Marriage in Cana of Galilee

Dark-eyed,
O woman of my dreams,
...

Poets Dance in the heart of rhythms
Discussion spoken in the pen
Energy being tampered with in the music
Limitations rarely occur in audio-silence
...

Looked forward to the Saturday Night dance
We did, all dressed up to 'shine',
With winkle picker shoes, and layers of net
In our petticoats. We felt divine.
...

THE warder looks down at the mid hour of night,
On the tombs that lie scatter'd below:
The moon fills the place with her silvery light,
And the churchyard like day seems to glow.
...

But in the Wine-presses the human grapes sing not nor dance:
They howl and writhe in shoals of torment, in fierce flames consuming,
...

In Breughel's great picture, The Kermess,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal and the blare and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
...

Men with picked voices chant the names
of cities in a huge gallery: promises
that pull through descending stairways
to a deep rumbling.
...

Dance dance dance men dance,
Dance with air and water dance.
Dance dance dance men dance,
Dance with the earth and the moon dance.
...

Music makes many shake head, hands, legs and body to dance in fun or joy;
Even melodious song makes to shake gently as if accepting the theme well;
But dance is simply to say is shaking of whole body according to music and song;
Dance certainly gives a sense of relief from tension ridden world we are living in!
...

Dance

Dance is the dynamic
expression Of Life,
...

Vanilla Coke & Pick 'n' Mix
Show me one of those magic tricks
Then I'll take you right by the hips
And dance, & dance, & dance 'til the mourning comes!
...

Fling-swing!
At every turn
Earthlings dance frug
with frog jumps, step taps in Irish,
...

Mohiniattam -
The dance of the enchantress
The dance of God's own country,
The dance of the palm fringed back waters,
...

Dance life dance,
Dance, dance.

Here is the eternity
...

Foreword to "Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch"


This poem is more properly a "dance poem" than a song or chant because the element of repetition is created by movements of language rather than duplicating words and sounds. However, it is in the spirit of ritual recitation that I wrote it/ a performance to drive away bad spirits perhaps.

The story behind the poem is this: a man and woman who have been living together for some time separate. Part of the pain of separation involves possessions which they had shared. They both angrily believe they should have what they want. She asks for some possession and he denies her the right to it. She replies that she gave him money for a possession which he has and therefore should have what she wants now. He replies that she has forgotten that for the number of years they lived together he never charged her rent and if he had she would now owe him $7,000.

She is appalled that he equates their history with a sum of money. She is even more furious to realize that this sum of money represents the entire rent on the apartment and implies that he should not have paid anything at all. She is furious. She kills him mentally. Once and for all she decides she is well rid of this man and that she shouldn't feel sad at their parting. She decides to prove to herself that she's glad he's gone from her life. With joy she will dance on all the bad memories of their life together.




for my motorcycle betrayer

God damn it,
at last I am going to dance on your grave,
old man;
you've stepped on my shadow once too often,
you've been unfaithful to me with other women,
women so cheap and insipid it psychs me out to think I might
ever
be put
in the same category with them;
you've left me alone so often that I might as well have been
a homesteader in Alaska
these past years;
and you've left me, thrown me out of your life
often enough
that I might as well be a newspaper,
differently discarded each day.
Now you're gone for good
and I don't know why
but your leaving actually made me as miserable
as an earthworm with no
earth,
but now I've crawled out of the ground where you stomped me
and I gradually stand taller and taller each
day.
I have learned to sing new songs,
and as I sing,
I'm going to dance on your grave
because you are
dead
dead
dead
under the earth with the rest of the shit,
I'm going to plant deadly nightshade
on your grassy mound
and make sure a hemlock tree starts growing there.
Henbane is too good for you,
but I'll let a bit grow there for good measure
because we want to dance,
we want to sing,
we want to throw this old man
to the wolves,
but they are too beautiful for him, singing in harmony
with each other.
So some white wolves and I
will sing on your grave, old man
and dance for the joy of your death.
"Is this an angry statement?"
"No, it is a statement of joy."
"Will the sun shine again?"
'Yes,
yes,
yes,"
because I'm going to dance dance dance
Duncan's measure, and Pindar's tune,
Lorca's cadence, and Creeley's hum,
Stevens' sirens and Williams' little Morris dance,
oh, the poets will call the tune,
and I will dance, dance, dance
on your grave, grave, grave,
because you're a sonofabitch, a sonofabitch,
and you tried to do me in,
but you cant cant cant.
You were a liar in a way that only I know:
You ride a broken motorcycle,
You speak a dead language
You are a bad plumber,
And you write with an inkless pen.
You were mean to me,
and I've survived,
God damn you,
at last I am going to dance on your grave,
old man,
I'm going to learn every traditional dance,
every measure,
and dance dance dance on your grave
one step
for every time
you done me wrong.
...

A vast difference there is between life and dance in the world;
Best performance of a dance is possible to do by one who loves it;
Care is much needed to live life against odds to go on till end;
Dance is balancing movements unlike balancing vagaries of life!
...

The dance is
a romantic art
It creates some
beautiful melody
...