Program for The Dance

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 . . . . . . . . . . . . Just in . . . Just in word. Word of navigational challenges