Dancing in and out of jail with Twyla Tharp

It was 1985, closing in on Happy Hour

and the city had just won the World Series. 

I should say, the rest of the city. 

I had just come out of a make-shift, garage-style opium den 

where me and my friend Goldblatt had gone deeply

into weed and the wonders of multiple bottles popped. 

I drove, in this elevated Christmas Eve exuberance, 

straight (and conveniently, for the police) into a trap

where I was politely, but pointedly, asked to walk a line. 

I did that (politely, wanderingly); the cheerful police began 

to laugh, jingling cuffs, and the clearly-cultured police woman 

said that I moved like something right out of Twyla Tharp. 

Well, I said, we’re all in good moods here, the baseball 

team won, now we’re discussing modern dance, surely 

you’ll let me drive on home, I’m really ok. They didn’t like that. 

Someone jingled cuffs on me, I was jerked in a car

driven then walked to a cell, that night was not on the list 

of memories effervescent, just gray and fluorescent. 

BUT. When I got out, back to whatever my house was, 

I looked up the Twyla Tharp performances to see, 

and twenty-five years later, I stopped drinking for keeps. 

And now, years later, one way or another, I am dancing! 

Paris on crutches (minus one) 

There I was, resting suavely, after surgery in a cafe in Paris 

having gotten my hip replaced up in Belgium, and a tooth  

popped out of my mouth and dropped into my croissant. Hilarious! 

So naturally I laughed at that, slipped on my black leather jacket, 

walked out of the cafe over to the Seine and threw the tooth in, incisively

with some kind of upbeat prayer and a goodbye to my tooth,

all of this to keep any silly sadness (about falling apart, ha!) off of me. 

It had been a bumpy bunch of decades so now I was feeling festive. 

This surgery (replete with a sparkling smorgasbord of morphine!) 

sewed up a year to the day of my reservation at the rehab with a view,

sobering up after drinking every day from junior high school onwards. 

Back at the hotel, my tooth already having a made a splash in Paris, 

something was pulling at my drinking sleeve to go to the American Cathedral

across the river and a few doors down from the Champs-Élysées, then down

the ancient steps to the crypt to the secret meeting to talk it over. In French!

That meant crossing Paris on crutches—streets, trains, the subway

under the Seine, up and down the stairs—could I do it? Oui, oui, oui! 

Get up out of bed, down the hotel stairs on my wooden crutches, flashing 

down the street, across the city on the Métro, considered going way down 

those stairs into the Catacombs but I’d be out of my skull to try that, so 

I kept on across Paris and under the river, through the Arc de Triomphe!

Those deliciously fun French making way for me on the sidewalk, 

offering their seats on the subway, smiling and saluting me 

like I’m Jean Gabin, and what a wonderful day, 

such a long, long way

from junior high, my body still alive! 

 

Butterflies running away from home 

Cool, crisp, sensually expectant Fall 

right around the corner and I can barely keep my pants on!

Cold night air smoky in your window, candy corn glowing in the sheets

new kids at school, new clothes and school supplies new 

all there at the foot of your bed, or under your pillow

(probably no kids under your pillow) and, then ... 

touches of lipstick and blue jeans in the backseat of some car. 

Some see decay and death in Fall, Winter blowing in next

(but there are forever romantic secrets sparkling in the snow drifts) 

and though I could drop in my tracks any second, 

I don’t see it that way at all. 

Last year I saw a skyful of red dry yellow wild  

leaves blowing sideways 

like butterflies running away from home. 

This year I’m going with them!

 

Sinead unafraid 

The kind voice of a fierce rebel angel 

and I hope she’s somewhere beautiful like her 

somewhere loud with laughing and love runs free,

where shame’s gone out the window

somewhere the pope lost his dress and Sinatra 

(and other one-note choir boys!) can’t get a gig. 

 

Drinking in a blues club at seven in the morning, 

then getting breakfast

I had been drinking like it (or I) was going out of style since ten 

in the morning the morning before, then I heard a yellow clock

humming behind the bar across the room, glowing like the yellow 

Moonbeam clock in my grandma’s kitchen across the state line. 

Snowing all night, so we didn’t know where the state line was 

anymore, and anyway it was just us now, sweetly and privately. 

A woman real close to me had her yellow pumps up on the table 

crossed at the ankles, some of her fingers interlaced with mine,

the rest of them loose into her loose red hair, she was smiling sleepy 

but her fingers were squeezing me awake. Still smelled of Chanel. 

And then, breakfast. Eggs rose like suns on the tables, pancakes 

piled up hot and smoky, syrup and butter lathered in, the warm woman 

near me kicked off her pumps, dipped her toes in the egg yolks 

and acrobatically fed me the drippings as I dangled bacon like grapes 

to her lips, then I dangled her the grapes (I owed her, I liked her!) 

and everyone ate, and ate, and kept on eating until they all passed out. 

This was all friendly, no one was going home for days, a warm shaft of sunlight 

came in, some of us in the room were cheating, with other lovers, blame

it on the snow, but everyone was alright, smiling at each other, and the smell 

of the kitchen lighting up was so homey, all of us so far away from everything. 

 

A good deed, a soul connection, and a touchdown

This happened on a flat Sunday, almost 4th of July

so flat even God — he or she

wasn’t gonna go to church, the local church 

being so square and pale in its architecture 

and congregation; so hopeless and defeated in its music, 

out in Kansas City long ago in a soft, dreamy place called Brookside.  

I was out strolling, Señor Jobim on my Walkman,

going for my Sunday case of beer; I eased into the market, 

took a look at the clientele, not inspiring, maybe church had let out; 

they were devotedly praying hunching over their shopping carts, 

their little kids trying to make a run for it, and yet—

there was this one brave woman. 

She was swirling colors in her clothes, smart blue eyes like spotlights

wherever she looked, I could not take my eyes off of her 

and although she hadn’t seen me, I wanted to go over and shake her hand. 

She was powerful, she rotated around herself, 

but radiated out something that pulled objects (like me) in; 

she was private but spectacular

with a sensual, sniffing nose that may have been powdered in Paris. 

Meanwhile, gradually, nearly imperceptibly, everyone in the market 

(the second they saw her)

stood up straight off their carts, bright-eyed 

and bushy-tailed, all the way up out of prayer mode.  

There was music up above us, it changed the moment, a song called 

“The Captain of Her Heart” coming down; I knew it, looked at her, 

saw that she recognized it too, we made eye contact with each other 

(I felt fireworks all over me, 4th of July weekend had nothing to do with it), 

recognized that we both recognized the song, so, nothing else to recognize, 

she went back to the cooler full of white wines. She had frosty breath. 

I was being nonchalant in my fascination with her, on the surface

(she wasn’t looking my way anyway—I thought), got my case of beer 

from the opposite cooler, we both had frosty breaths in the cooler aisle. 

Behind me, she was humming, then singing 

to “The Captain of Her Heart.” I smiled; I smiled 

and turned around to harmonize with her 

but she was above me, and reaching higher!

She was standing on the low foot rail of her very full 

therefore rock-steady cart reaching for a bottle 

of Gallo white wine up high in the cooler, chilled 

and seemingly out of reach but she put her finger on it. 

Her finger set the bottle, and the rest of the day, 

and a lot of the rest of my life in motion; the bottle wobbled, 

got in a rhythm wilder, teetering … swinging side to side, falling, 

a fat gallon going down.                              (Yes, I dived. I dove!) 

I dove for the bottle like the wide receiver I once was but 

was never meant to be except for maybe 

in this moment with this woman 

and I caught the bottle cleanly cradling it from the hard linoleum 

(smashed the Walkman) and slid down the aisle 

into a soft display 

of paper towels for sale.

“Touchdown!” 

This from the woman (of course) as she flung her 

red velvet beret up in the air where it landed with a 

red velvet wobble on a security camera high in the supermarket ceiling

—apropos, you know?

We were stealing the show from the churchgoers. 

I got up, stacked back up the paper towels, 

the woman’s arms were still up in the air 

(she was too!) for the touchdown 

as she eased down from her cart with a big, bright smile. 

People watched us in churchly silence, 

a manager of the supermarket (name tag) arrived, 

I went around him, took the bottle to the woman, 

her arms came down, we looked each other over. 

Maybe it was a flat Sunday, both bored 

or maybe we were both Sunday lonely at home, 

or maybe we saw a new curvature 

of the earth, the two of us walking off out of orbit! 

Looking each other over, we began to smile.  

Like maybe it was that last thing. 

I’m in the book, she said. This was back then, 

in the days when there were those books. 

What’s your name? I asked. I was almost at the point

of telling her mine, to be gentlemanly. 

You’ll know it when you need it, she said. She had me there. 

I knew what she meant. And I knew it was on the horizon. 

That need; it was coming soon. 

She was maybe many years older 

but what did that have to with anything? 

I was simultaneously maybe many years younger. 

Fireworks are fireworks.