Purim

I cant tell celebration from concept now a days.

The Dove bar (moisturizing) scents just the bathroom and not beyond.

Perhaps locked in it's encode is the restriction to not get past

the hallway door where the cat scratches even as I sit and grunt.

Thumbing through, for the umpteenth time, the March/April 2011 issue of

the American Poetry Review, the one with Ellen Bass on the cover

wry smiling in her green lobe earrings and her eyebrows needing trimmed.

But like the crash on 75 that you said you wouldn't slow down to watch

the blood trickle down the elderly mans chin, you stopped and gawked

then went home with that feeling in your gut....I wont do again, what I've

done before. I wont pretend the face bowl is the confessional; the Colgate

Whitening tooth paste my little bursting wafer of sacrament .

When i'm old, I don't want to still be pathetically clinging to people

who thought my loving them was silly, or that the ring

I haven't been able to successfully remove was a mere melancholy

I could not logically defend. I'm going to dance my way out of here; this life,

this room before I am destroyed. Dance like Monk, Like Tevye,

Like Chris Brown, Petula Clark, T-O, like my dad again full of Pabst Blue Ribbon

all rolled into one. Till the pee runs down my leg.

Reviews

[Beccy]

For the mind to remain strong is my greatest wish. Physically, parts wear, sometimes fail; get replaced if we are fortunate. I suppose in this respect we are very much like the motor car; (which of all of our inventions, is, I believe, the one that we have taken the closest to our hearts.) Eventually, no matter what, the breaker's yard will beckon; but oh yes, we must keep dancing until the very, very end.

Dylan Thomas called it so right when he wrote, 'Do not go gentle into that good night.'

Beccy.

[Wee]

Good piece like paint splashed on a clear canvas you painted us a portrait from with in.

[writing mojo]

a constant to your pieces, skeletal abruptness, from the self cleaning to the pudding skin in it's amazing dermal affairs, which in molecular endearment crust an energy, the dust of life clings to make spores for colonization, and that's where we come in, us the part of the reviewers the readers in these little bands to express out reflections on what makes us in this environment homeostatic to discovery in what makes us stick..excellent piece

[emmajoy]

As near a series of paintings a writer can reach; a meaning, if not a title to each gasp of time. But can someone paint a tragedy on the move? Tis perhaps quicker tho by no means no less complex, to lay words over seconds .. hours .. .. years .. in a series of fading coloured letters perhaps. This writing of yours is extraordinarily beautiful in its absolute truth. From start to startling finish.

'When i'm old, I don't want to still be pathetically clinging to people - who thought my loving them was silly, or that the ring I haven't been able to successfully remove was a mere melancholy - I could not logically defend. '

[W.k.kortas]

One of the hallmarks of great poetry is the ability to express the most elemental and fundamental tenets in an elegant manner--and thus, this. We are to live, damnit, and celebrate such (as the title implies), we should each "dance my way out of here." To piggy back on what Olivia (so wise beyond her years) said, there is an admirable narrative string here, and, to echo the wise Mr. Simm, your writing often leaves me mute with wonder, and this no exception.

[Ken Simm.]

Oh that last line. A portrait of the Artist as an older man. Excellent concept and I would say admirably tackled if it didn't deserve much more praise than that. Sometimes your work literally (ifn every meaning of that word) speechless or more acurately wordless. In admiration I need add.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

"till the pee runs down my leg"

god, i don't want to get there...i do want to go out dancing...and brushing my own teeth, and not clinging to people to keep my body and heart upright...
and petula clark was a perky little dancer at that. i will slow down to watch life now...while it is my option to slow down...not something that will happen with or without my intention.

[Olivia]

"Till the pee runs down my leg"
The perfect ending line.
I found this poem was like a precise poetic train of thought.