MR. CRUNCHY

(part one)

This dance you do, what do you call it?
This old thing? Oh, I don’t know.
Maybe Waltz-with-a-Hole-in-my-Pocket,
maybe the High Voltage Serenade.
Maybe I dance when I sleep and don’t know it,
my follicles swaying toward star light. Maybe I am photosynthesis in reverse:
All crimped and fetalized under sunlight, all milk tides and electric limbs by night. See how protectively your skin is gripped to you?
Force of habit, that’s all.
It just never found a better dance partner.
Let it slip off your coat hanger bones
and find the real freedom it needs.
Let it have an affair with a traveling salesman
in a sleazy motel, let it assume the form for him
of an aging movie star he was in love with as a child,
and as they sleep, their tattered bodies lit
by late-night TV, by its’ blue swarm
of itemized moonlight, someone on the screen
is squawking, about a 1-800 number.
A place where you can dance all night.

You’ll catch me down there
at the Omnivore’s Ball,
swinging with the spectacle,
looking for my latest victim
who could pass as my own lonely double.