Valse

someone drop the curtain on these cats
all the way down to the ocean floor
drown out the dark
and flood the whole world with an iridescent flow
that the mechanical masses might awake
to a new dawn
and say in (almost) unison

   today we are free

not in any sense of the word
raped time and again
bent and twisted like hands on a clock
reaching backward to reclaim minutes old and stale
or forward to those not yet past

but in a sense of senses
keen to the surrounding currents of air
to the feeling of the earth,
soft and bare beneath shattered layers of
concrete crust
             cust
       cussed
 cursed
the worst
  the worth
   the want
  the scales and measures and
the very weight itself

but memories
blurred to the point of obscurity

 figures in fog

    dancing