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This morning's dance responding to Darin Stevenson's poem on FB.

The People Who Are Gone

Oh people of my bones.
Your thunder is my skull.
Your blood makes my breathing live.

Dead minds with guns buried your millions.
For sport, to kill with metal seeds. For laughter.
Oh people of my bones.

I will be your body now.
My face will be your faces!
Your eyes are all my starry wings.

The People of the Hooves!
Your thunder is my heartbeat.
My soul will be your flying stars!

Why did they make you dead?
Who were the monsters bathed in red?
I cannot live without your thunder.

Oh people of my bones, my breath!
The Bison People!
My people! Make me be your voices!


RESPONSE

"Thunder is my skull"

Not in my skull. Is my skull. 

The thunder reverberates and 

becomes the ossified frame of my brain

where terrible lines of rhyme bang around:

"Red hooves run roughshod 

on the sod of my brain 

followed by 40 days 

and nights of rain."

The drum so loud it was rumored to be deadly

(which I read about in Keith Richards autobiography.)

 The Hand of God Claps and wakes up the city.

I'm dancing now, in a frozen graveyard,

listening to Coltrane live (once) at the Village Vanguard.

I stop by a grave belonging to the name Meringolo.

Marigold, I think, Mexican flower of the dead,

to shepherd the dead, to soothe a grieving heart. 

I stop and stomp in circles, remembering.

I begin to yell out the names of the dead

etched on the stones all around me, 

musical Italian names, Irish names,

the music of the bellowed names laced 

with Coltrane's horn, exulting to hear 

themselves shouted out again, reborn.

 

Book of snow (true response)

Dance tracks