Dancing Remains

Starving cats shriek to a full, hopeless moon The thick air drips with decay and rank ruin Feral dogs scream, adding pain to the chorus Extending an invite to those gone before us Fred Astaire and Miss Rogers they clearly are not As they stumble and scrabble up through Hadean rot Their eyes wormy sockets, foul-toothed, dangling jaws Macabre click-click-clicking sounds a hellish applause Dry bones clack-clacking, grotesque, face to face, Partner holds partner in hideous embrace These skeletal dancers reek a rancid perfume Unsure and undead, their lives re-resume Their clattering waltz is relentless and jerky As they dance to hell’s music, unrhythmic and murky The conductor’s malevolent, ghoulish, reviled His empty eyes glitter, black flames burning wild Clarinets scrape the nighttime with fractals of silence As violins offer melodies of mayhem and violence Percussion and horns build a battlefield wall ‘Til there is no escape from the dead dancers’ ball