Left in the Dance

Bryan Dini

This boy, here, with lips pursed

and a brow drawn by lines

of too much thinking--

a harsh shadow over a broad nose

and drowsy eyelids, with a neck

that cranes habitually to the left

and a handshake that retreats

too soon and stutters--

I left him in the dance.

This boy, here, who thought

solitude was fashionable, and who

would stretch dirty lawn chairs

over clean-cut grasses and wonder,

alone, how the people who live

assembly-line lives in Euclidean houses

could be happy when the faraway birds

migrating northbound to some unknown

primitive wilderness were calling them out

of their vicarious digital travelogues--

I left him, too, in the dance.

This boy, here, who sucked a tit

that left him cold, and who was

otherwise fascinated by the throbbing

cyclopean stare that drooled

lovely pearls when lit by

thrashing tongues, fevered lips--

who got bent and spread-eagled

because male receptivity was sexually subversive

and proved he could take it like a man

when really all he wanted was to feel like

the shudders had been lifted

before a single human gaze

for one transparent moment--

I left him, too, in the dance.

This boy, here, who thought

he was a Democrat, but then realized

their proposed socialist safety net

would increase his taxes--

and who was too tender to flirt with the Republicans

because they didn't give a shit in the first place--

and who found himself somewhere in the middle

disillusioned with media spectacles

slightly Green but technicolored

looking for something more real,

more mystical than politics--

I left him, too, in the dance.

This boy, here, who thought

God was first a man got through a virgin

whose tears were rosary beads to be cried

and counted before bed every night in prayer--

and who started looking for divinity elsewhere--

in equations--in the stars--

in the ghosts of galaxies

their spectral light reaching

from their burnt-out graves

on the periphery of time

like the last retreating gasp

of a dying legion

looking back over their lives

before the last nuclear blast--

and still later looked for it

in the drugged but lucid eyes

of someone to whom he just made love

and the expectantly vacant moment

when

any possibility of discerning

where his body began

and the other ended

was nil--

I left him, too, in the dance.

This boy, here, who distrusted

his senses because he could not feel

with his world-weary heart

the bittersweet prick of all those Things

that tickle our nerve-endings

and make life worth living--

and who was converted to

touch, smell, sight, sound, taste

by the inexplicable grace of

a crushed-velvet space

of substances too coarse for addiction

and too fine to be given up--

all burnt in an offering,

a tempered ring of spicy clove-smoke

blown drunk with tangy red wine

across eager wet lips ready to kiss

and an Air on a G-string

that was played so sweetly

it fell off and revealed

a glistening white buttock

ready to fuck--

all he needed to make him happy--

I left him, too, in the dance.

Lover! Lover! See him there!

There is a poison in his brain!

A poison that makes the fireworks

between his temples shoot

like pitchforked thunder

from his static-charged fingertips--

A poison that makes the slowly erotic jazz

spinning

through the night

vibrate with cymatic symmetries

he tries to grasp and weave together

with his chi-dripping hands

until he realizes these Things

must not be held

but let go—

A poison that makes visible

those synergetic spiderwebs

plucked symphonically inside him

capturing the epileptic neon lights

all around

in their crystal orbs

broadcasting beauty

on a higher frequency--

A poison that lifts him up

and dumps him out

and makes a space

for Things to name

as their nesting place.

You admire him, Lover, don't you?

Like an act, but without an actor.

There is just a body cleaved

with invisible magnetic needles

that reach out from every corner

pulling

tugging

gently coercing

in every direction

like a man with elastic limbs

quartered by horse-drawn ropes

on a flower-laden rack.

A body that would rock and fly

as if in maternal lullaby--

or a ship sailing black, uncharted waves

that is sea-sawed by curious winds

from far-off places where

foreign words and fragrances drift by

like lost sprites from another world

looking for the compass

that would lead them home--

a choreography like the sad but graceful

sillhouette of a dying swan

in a glassy pond ballet

with children watching naively

in a nearby playground

and asking their mothers

what it means

to cease to be

entirely.

You smile, Lover, at this

peaceful nihilist

because the shadow has been lifted

from his haloed brow--

because the lines have been

sandpapered smooth--

because his contemplative chin

is no longer cleft in fistful repose--

his cheeks ovular, porcelain

his eyes no longer secretive

his expression as happily vacuous

as a newborn calf.

You smile, Lover, and continue to do so

even as this plastic marionette

cuts his strings

and backslides

down

column

until he lies almost prostrate

an open lotus

like a tipsy Buddha

who collapses

dishevelled

beneath his Bo Tree

not quite off the Wheel

and feeling the inward centrifugal force

fling his bones and sinews ever wider

like his soul is much too big

and bursts out at the seams.

You wonder how it is possible

that small narrative miracles like this

still occur in a world where people

march daily into anonymous money factories

with rank and file tagged squarely

on their cattleswine backs.

You sigh for a moment

as the space around your Lover

....stills....

quietly waiting

for some

impending crescendo

a slightly more subtle burning bush

to remind everyone

that their childhood fairytales

still exist--

less biblical, perhaps,

but no less magical.

But you are his eyes, Lover,

and you describe inwardly

this very thing before him

he can no longer see.

This fur you clutch beneath your hand, you say,

Belongs to some unknown, unowned creature,

A dog or wolf, none can say,

That wandered in with a tuft of gray

To lick the night from your face

And pillow your fetal frame

Like a stillborn babe carried back to heaven

On sweetly sorrowing angel's wings.

This heat you feel on your face, you say,

Belongs to that same shaft of dawning light

That turned Saul into Paul on the road to Damascus

And cuts now through thick cartwheeling dust motes

To bleed honeydew on your sugared crescent eyelids

And pull a luminous blanket over those tender parts

Still chilled by the whispering cadence

Of the snow-melt river crying to herself

Because she is overwhelmed with beauty outside.

This voice you hear, you say, not with a single ear

But with every open pore that drinks in sound and light

Belongs to him, your Lover, who will sing you now to sleep

And blow reassuring kisses into the void

Like rose-petals wafting on an obsidian pool dotted with stars

So that you do not make peace too soon with nothingness

So that you heed the welcoming siren-song of an existence

That still needs us, because we make palpable

And we articulate nature's half-spoken, half-realized utterances

With our interwoven fingers and inextricable breath.

I open my eyes--

and this boy, here, who thought

he was the selfsame consciousness

that impels the unfurling chrysalis toward the sun

the infant toward it's mother's breast

the patient to make his last request

which stares out of all things

and sees you seeing me--

I left him, now, in the dance.

And here I am presently

existing in the pregnant space

between two lovers

always ready to birth

greater wholes--

Because all love and poetry begin

when we put ourselves in another's place--

Because poetry is philosophy

experienced through the body--

Because the body is God's way

of seeing Its own thoughts--

And my last thought is:

YOU.

Bryan Dini currently lives in California where he is a philosophy student. He promises to be a brilliant philosopher in the vein of the mystic Osho. He is a “so-postmodern-you-cant-even-see-me-yet Zen motherfucker.”