remembering the dancer

he woke one relentless summer morning
sleep walking in a flashback dream sequence
facing a photograph of a distant dancer
and fantasies of galaxies
far far away taped to his teenaged walls
that he once put his fist through
in hopes of breaking through
to an understanding between himself
and his broken family.

at the time he wanted to know
if he cried when he was told
about the coming divorce,
because at 18 he no longer
remembered what happened to the
color and temperature of his eyes
when he was told at 5, 6, or 7?
and so he now wanted to feel
what he thought he never felt.

then after being told to clean up
the crumbling hole and dust that clouded
the scene like some semi-artsy yet
very commercial british film
director would have staged
to make this bloody dirty rebel
moment pretty and moody and palatable,
he absolutely left the moment behind
unclean, and walked to the mall
to catch a bus to catch a train...
to catch another train,
and they would all be his cohorts
in this runaway story.

he didn't call
to tell them where he was.
he didn't call to warn
his destination.
he just ran.
and held onto his
pulsating hand
that now only had this
in mind...
to touch that dancer in the photograph
who moved with the only
truth he really wanted on that day.
a giving up of the past that only offered walls
for him to test his reluctant man-hood on
and enter into her modern world that
could set his past aflame and start new
like that bird did once...the fiery one?
enter inside her and let her teach him
how to dance as he never knew before.
he only danced in visions of posters of
starlets that he didn't even have the courage
to put on his wall.

but the dancer was real
and running to her,
and entering her for the first time,
and finding himself for the first time
far far away from a life of them knowing
where he was, who he was, even when he was,
was all he wanted.
he was at last starting his life,
and running to her
and away from the definition
of himself though the eyes
of his parents past.

he and the dancer
drenched and lying together
in the end of one world
and the beginning of another,
sid vicious crooning MY WAY
through the humidity
that thankfully
wouldn't let the moment
dissipate....
he reached over
and found a pencil and paper
and sketched a self-portait
with a cool hat and beard.
neither of which he had...
but he knew it was a picture
of a man he wanted to be
one day.
then as he reached over
to enter the dancer again
and remind himself
of this new world
and the freedom
of running away from
selves to other selves
who have a right to start over,
he woke alone
24 years later
to other walls
that were empty,
and he leaned over and
sketched another picture
of himself
and taped it on the new empty wall
then blasted sid vicious screaming MY WAY,
and thrashed, and danced, and punched new holes
in walls that he didn't want anymore...
and he rested on the floor quiet and wet
and remembering
and letting go...
and remembering