The Dancing Plague of 1518: Collaboration with Dilly Dally
A plague cursed, until death they dance
Until forever lasts this plight
Moving hypnotic deep in trance
Onlookers revel at the sight
From days to weeks, from dawn til' night
Hysteria spread the expanse
Collapse in exhaust by firelight
A plague cursed, until death they dance
Can I dance myself free perchance
Repent and be rid of this smite
I bleed amidst this endless prance
Until forever lasts this plight
Exhaustion sets with hope just slight
Up to Saint Vitus' healing glance
Limbs swinging limp, glazed eyes contrite
Moving hypnotic deep in trance
Free me of sin, my soul enhance
Crosses on shoes to quell the fright
Quicken the end, I beg advance
Onlookers revel at the sight
They fell in numbers, losing might
By now all but God looked askance
Dance to rest and read the last rite
All life is but a game of chance
A plague cursed
May 22, 2023
Categories:
vitus, history, loss,
Form: Rondeau Redouble
Tremblors
By Sy Roth
They could feel it
Creeping beneath their feet,
Messaging their sole
Sending tremblors
Up into their thigh
Had to put a stop to its progress
Fearful that ecstasy might make a break
Through their pates.
It did have a song in it
Song of enslavement--
Dwarves marching somewhere
From deep in the mines
With a yo heave ho
It’s off to work we go
A siren’s melody.
A pandemic spread horizontally
A tremblor horizontal
Infects those close by
As they watch the others twitch,
St. Vitus dance to a greater god.
They shuffle lopsidedly
And you shuffle lopsidedly
And the buildings offer no anchor
As they lopsidedly cavort in congress
With you
And they
And them
To the imagined entities.
Who knows what to call them,
The voiceless horde who will bend
Ultimately break and become one with the earth?
Silent tremblors beneath the swelling mounds
A corpse gas feeding the air with their fading.
But there’s no one left to smell them
Except the birds that borne aloft
Move the air languidly around them
The species below a fetid remembrance
That would not pay heed to the tremblors.
Categories:
vitus, corruption,
Form: Free verse
GODSTARTER
OKECHUKWU CHIDOLUO VITUS
WWW.GODSTARTER.ORG.NG
it is a good thingto start with God
All the time start with Him, start
His love for us is endurance
I wake up daily to see this man
Who would always start the day with God
And I thought it was a mistake
And one day show he was wise
A car accident proved it
The car was smashed
All thought he was dead
But he was Divine saved and alive.
So I remember all who prayed
To God all the time
And the king ordered the furnace heated
The men who took them there
Didnot come back alive
So was the angel who save the Lions
The world heated several times
Is only safe for godstarter
Who start the day and ends the day
With the God of heaven.
Categories:
vitus, inspirational love, integrity, international,
Form: Pastoral
Oh dear I do feel poorly
oh dear I do feel weird
My chest it is a wheezing
I’ve infection in my ears
I cannot hear a blooming thing
Oh dear I do feel quite done in
My Parkinson’s leg is shaking
like I have St Vitus Dance
I wonder just how long I have
to enjoy my life perchance
What with coughing, ears and leg
I feel like taking to my bed
Or will my chest just do its best to hasten my demise
To take me to another place somewhere beyond the skies
But wait, I’m feeling better
My time it has not come
I must take a walk beside the sea
Afore Grim Reaper comes for me
So enough of this self-pity feeling sorry for one’s self
And getting so obsessed with every symptom of one’s health
It’s just a virus nothing more
Don’t let those thoughts come through my door
I’ll soon be back to feeling good
The way I want
the way I should
Apart that is from good old “P”
Whose tremors remind me constantly
But Parkinson’s won’t define me
I swear I will not let it
So if I can
I swear I will
I’ll blooming well forget it!
Written - 21.10.2017
Categories:
vitus, encouraging, humor, pain, recovery
Form: Rhyme
Beneath the dam St. Vitus swam
Till he settled upon a bar
Where heaven's light reflected bright
In eyes fixed upon a star
No move he made, or mind he paid
When minnows gently kissed
Good night to him, who couldn't swim,
Now shroud in mornings mist.
Epilogue - The Fall of Man
With celestial shine cast so divine,
His rapture was complete.
Was heaven's call that caused the fall,
Damned by agnostic feet.
* A light parody (if imagery of a drowning could be considered light) of a wonderful poem "Muess des Beaux Arts" by W. H. Auden. Auden's poem is based on a 15th century painting "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus". The theme of the poem (I am vastly over simplifying the theme here) is the human capacity to be so focused on our daily lives that an amazing tragedy, Icarus fall from the sky, could go unnoticed. My point is that if you are too fixed on the heavens and great questions - life, the universe, and everything - you might miss the simple things that are important . . . like watching where you are going!
(And no, St. Vitus didn't drown, he is the patron saint of dancers and epileptics.)
Categories:
vitus, humor, imagery, satire, universe,
Form: Rhyme
The staccato stammering of bass guitars
punctuated the flash of strobe lights.
Limitless vistas of black and gray;
smothering the crowd in ghoulish poses.
Framed, as if frozen, in a glow of acid white.
Some stagger, their movements mimicking,
the rigors of death or birth?
Others jerk puppet like
upon invisible, randomly clipped, strings.
And, as the music grinds to a halt,
driven by the apocalyptic pace of the Disc Jockey,
and the hard scratching sound of synthesizers;
the charmed, trance dancers disperse;
swallowed whole by the shadows.
*St. Vitus's dance was a social phenomenon
that occurred primarily in mainland Europe
between the 14th and 18th centuries;
it involved groups of people, sometimes thousands at a time,
who danced uncontrollably and bizarrely.
Men, women, and children would dance
through the streets of towns or cities,
sometimes foaming at the mouth
until they collapsed from fatigue....and the beat goes on....
Categories:
vitus, allegory, angst, art, confusion,
Form: Free verse