Dancer
by Michael R. Burch

You will never change;
you range,
investing passion in the night,
waltzing through
a blinding blue,
immaculate and fabled light.

Do not despair
or wonder where
the others of your race have fled.
They left you here
to gin and beer
and won't return till you are bled

of fantasy
and piety,
of brewing passion like champagne,
of storming through
without a clue,
but finding answers fall like rain.

They left.
You laughed,
but now you sigh
for ages,
stages
slipping by.

You pause;
applause
is all you hear.
You dance,
askance,
as drunkards cheer.

Keywords/Tags: dancer, waltz, waltzing, applause, drink, drunkards, neon light, strobe, flash, flashing, crystal ball, chandelier, lap dancer, exotic dancer, stripper, peeler, strip, striptease artist, burlesque, Moulin Rogue, dance, passion, champagne, gin, beer

2 fitted sheets, stretched and tucked atop each
other. A nesting home for soft bugs with thousands
of legs, in which you cannot see.
Why does it smell like Michigan basement
bathrooms, and size 4 feet in turtle sandboxes.

Painted, chipped, salvageable wood only shows
it's gritty teeth in the day light.
leaking through shower curtain rings on
the makeshift curtains like pool water
through the cracks in your smiling eyes,
blue goggles, the ones that cover the nose.

the longer you listen to the silence,
the louder it gets.
or is that the sounds of fan blades
ripping through the indescribable texture of
the stale air you swim through each night.

You'd swear you experienced a sonic boom here,
the bull whip cracking from over pressure. or is it
under pressure? I always thought that pressure
weighed like pounds and tons. I still don't
know if that is wrong.

I won't remember the sound of your laugh,
or the way you smell, or the clothes you wore
when we met. Like a good poet should.
But I'll remember all the things we forgot
to do together. All the times we spoke but
got too high to listen.

High, like the time I told you I thought
the trees and the sun were making
strobe lights for our long drive into
October. Flashing light in the car windows,
as we drove down the open freeway.

It's easy to remember the world
was made for us, when we are
alone, here, in this room, together,
like we were before, and will be soon
once again.