Nijinsky for the Ages

 

Here's a dancer or acrobat done with pencil and white-out on construction paper for a poem about the ballet Dancer Nijinsky.
‘Blue Dancer’: pencil and white-out on construction paper

 

Nijinsky for the Ages

The dancer wore the cross
in order to gain an audience.
Whether he loves himself as Narcissus or God
he needs to be watched by ordinary people.

~

It is God
because Narcissus is all by himself.

~

The audience shows up to be amused
and thinks he dances for its amusement.
It takes as its own the emotion of his movements.
When his dances are frightening,
it thinks he wants to kill it.

~

The dancer is the spiritlife of the audience.
Outside the dance,
he claims to live like it lives
that it may find him sympathetic.

~

Aristocrats beg the dancer to dance again
But for now he must feign retirement.
Their inducements offer comfort,
whether or not their money
will finally contaminate him.
They become like temptation
when God calls out to the dancer, “Enough.”

~

“We all need money to carry out our plans,”
the dancer says time and again.
“We earn money to help us solve our problems.”
The dancer is God’s problem, not Antichrist’s.
“God,” says the dancer, “requires no money.”

~

God sits in the audience too.
Who knows it is there with them?
When it leaves the dancer will die soon.

~

The dancer expresses himself
from within his own sense of silence.
Like the dance,
writing is silent.
Listening is silence.
To listen to God
and to obey him: at last,
this is a good regular mode of living.
Because dancer is not afraid to live
it needs no money either.
Yet this insistence on it as inconsequential
operates like a deeply felt obsession.
With money, he reflects,
one can write a book,
feather a nest,
glide through the air
more effortlessly.[1]

 

[1] I don’t think many young people these days know the name Nijinsky but everyone is impressed by photos of him, the air he gets leaping, searched up on the internet. My only qualm with my own lines about the good dancer is that other older writers and writers now gone have their own pieces about him already. Marvin Solomon has one. Frank Bidart has one. I’ve found six more by men alone who are part of this Nijinsky club I imagine. My insecurities arise from the distinct possibility that they have a greater insight into our shared subject matter. I keep this worry from the young people I know and share what I can in passing with what confidence I can muster.

 

Blaming Nancy

I’m not blaming Nancy. It’s tempting but I won’t do it. To blame her would be to poison the air between us and potentially to blow my cover. May no one’s cover be blown tonight. May the air we breathe remain fresh and ample.

I’m not going to dance with Nancy. It’s tempting, if for no other reason than to mirror someone comfortable letting go. I am learning to let go but to mirror Nancy dancing could lead someone to think I was mocking her. This is not the night to imitate a wild nature. I will never mock Nancy for her wildness. One may or may not fall in love with Nancy but one must never make fun of her when she puts forth one of her purest selves.

I will not play the blame game with Nancy but I will dance near her as her brother has instructed. Incorporating spin movies into my otherwise straightforward maneuvers allows my gaze to sweep the dance floor like a searchlight with no incentive to shine a light on any one dancer. Is this not nonchalance deconstructed? Does not everyone dance near everyone in intimate club settings? This club falls somewhere between intimate and overly spacious because it is less like a club in its architecture and more like a repurposed gymnasium.

I will not rest with Nancy after hours of vigorous dancing but I will rest nearby and close my eyes in gratitude for my own able-bodied-ness. I will not in the timespan of a breath reach the conclusion that a guy’s sister is bent on self-destruction, but I will look at her, take the mental snapshot I’ve promised, an image realistic and unromantic enough that she might not mind me having it, and walk out into the night. On my way home, I will resist contemplating Nancy in any other way than one contemplates the unknowable life of a person just being. I will inform her brother that sis is all right. ‘I saw her with my own eyes,’ I will tell him, ‘and she could hardly be in a safer environment.’ ‘She’s dancing as we speak in a crowd whose intimacy derives from everyone dancing by themselves and together. Tonight, Charley, everyone returns home blameless and well rested.’

 

 

To Drive This Miracle Out Of Existence

A poem about a veggie burger and a photo of a cow.

Some people enjoy the taste of Miracle Burgers. We speak now of the ahimsa crowd, who doesn’t wear a single strand of cow-leather, let alone cook a goose, swat a fly, or eat raw honey. A Miracle Burger is a meatless food item that tastes like venison. Its critics call it ‘an ultra-processed junk food.’ They wish to devalue, to de-popularize, and ultimately to drive it out of existence. They will do so, they claim, via a relentless word-of-mouth campaign. It doesn’t matter, though, if in fact it does taste like the real thing. If it’s delicious, nothing they can do will make a difference.

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