Invitation To the Dance
It is not the music,
for one knows it in the heat
that rises from a cool miasma,
sardonic, self-igniting--
the one that ravages and never warms,
consumes, and cannot care.
Cold flame is of another art, and passionless.
It is the counterpart of a humanity
that gasps at loveliness
but grasps an aged, trembling hand
and cannot understand a trembling deity
which would implore and not demand.
It is a danse macabre...
there is no peace in pretense, for
it smells of fear, the while
its nourishment is truth.
It strikes through speaking
through closed hands and open hearts.
It makes of war and gentleness a home,
an irony, and often even does it
arm in arm.
And how importunate, the lead
who dares to ask of poverty
a share of its insolvence--
knowing greed is corporate,
while sacrifice is of the self alone.
To find it set apart for lesser goals,
it lies and gathers slippery sides,
setting off solutions for another day;
the night shall have its queen!
For she is Paradox
who sweeps across the room.
In gracious rule she covets,
blesses solitude, and ridicules its joy.
Hers lurks behind a mask
of beauty and romance;
the skin is putrid, the conceit
is infinite.
Hers is the blood that feasts
upon itself, that beats
upon a tympanum within--
its cadence to the dance
forever incomplete.
~
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