The Dance of the Terrible Middle

Caught in the terrible middle of the animal,
in the white nerve of my sleeping grandfather,
I go with the signs of night in a straight line,
eluding the contented star animals,
breathing with the transformation of their high place.

The high mountains are my prison,
the fear of your love my punishment.
I occasionally give in to thoughts of you.
The ghost of your memory is in my center.

We are separate, but
in each of us is the house
where both of us live.

In the table of your hair,
in the locked room,
to the living heart of the beast,
we come for charity.

The sweet scent of reason
dances to my middle self.
It is of the moon,
but equally of books––
a mongrel with its tail between its legs
howling a mortal solo of our split lives
and our separate deaths.

The rolling body of the star,
my body spinning to the paradox
of what I could believe in––
the faded ochre of the one truth of your friendship,
the disparate truth of my grandfather.

All out of line, unparallel.
Lover with your full nights’ sleep
and half of your life lost to this sleep,
you dream of three futures while
I dance the tango of the terrible middle.

For dVerse Poets Fragment Poem