WORD-UP

I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying (without you). And other things that will never be said, spoken, let loose in the air with a pound of flutter, and flap-flap-flap flop. So many things. Yes. so many I feel tongue-tied. Release me and I will spin, shake, rattle, and roll so hard I'll scare everything from here to Tucson. And so it begins.

In Carlsbad, a few of us, the brave, ventured off. A legend of a bet was made, to dance and to keep dancing as long as you could, enter the darkness of the desert and to make it to the other side, alive, if there was another side. Was there? At first I felt embarrassed, I was dancing alone, with no music either, like extras in a movie, but at least they had someone, they had purpose to their dance, what was mine? A strange rhythm took my body, entering it with cold fingers, unknown to me, I felt not myself, but I was lost in myself, in my dance, the more I moved, the more it made sense, but it was otter nonsense. The boys who entered at the same time were off to my sidelines, I could hear them shuffling, I wondered how they were dancing, and then thought of them thinking of me dancing, I sudden had an audience, but I already felt eyes burning into my back when I was giving her my back, and eyes burning into my chest and my hips when I was giving her my front. I wasn't trying to be sexy, I was, which isn't normal for me, but in moments like this, I felt I had some sex appeal, or else all was lost (long before being lost in the desert, long before the set of sun).

I felt the ground beneath me rumble, I was digging myself into the ground, foot by foot, I dug myself a grave. I was still moving forward but I was just underground now, not to be seen, to spite I still felt her eyes burning into either my chest or back, occasionally butt, burning my butt. The rumble grew louder, the darkness of night was now complete, and I couldn't tell what was approaching (only the things around me as they glowed in faint amber from the fiery burn my feet were making and feeling). Everything was rumbling up, my words, my feelings, all that I couldn't say them, all that I couldn't do then were moving my legs, bleeding in the sweat of my thighs, steaming up, and producing a mystic scene of my fiery feet. I swear I could hear moaning, and truth-be-told I wasn't sure if it was her or me, but it was somebody, and that was when the ground, the very ground that stretched endlessly in the darkness ended, spending me to a violent plummet off of a merciless cliff. My shirt ripped open, waving like old glory in the winds of freedom, my long wild and curly hair danced in the wind, wiping my cheeks a red. I started to sing, what I sung, I cannot remember, something my heart was feeling the moment it blew up in my chest.

I saw her, her eyes were crying with blood, drops fell into a dish of water she carried in slow motion. A giant made of boulder grew from the desert, and I hit flat like a lifeless piece of shit, and I swear I didn't die just then, no, I didn't even feel anything, just a bit of sand in my mouth, ahh-bah-chew-wee as I spat it out. I got up, and rather than brushing the dust off with my hands I continued to dance. I figured I had about four more levels of desert floor to go, my feet still on fire, I couldn't help but grin, look back to those eyes, piercing, forever watching, and just say back, with my eyes, "When are you going to join me, all I want to do with dance-dance-dance with you." Word-up.