Urban Myths and Mich Lights

She told me dozens of times, the colored yarn twined between her fingers, crochet hook zipping up and down...."How you bring in the New Year is how you spend the year"....fingers flying, eyes down.

I laughed.

Smudged out another cigarette, and told more stories.

She meant it.

I brought it in upside down, sideways, sound asleep. I burned up the old year, sent it ashes to ashes into the wind in the middle of the tiny paved street. I buried it in the back yard, stuffed it in a suitcase and set it out for the garbage man. I danced to Stones. Danced with fossils. Danced by myself. I made resolutions, promises, threats to an empty sky. I cha-chinged it, cheered it, clinked it, feared it. I tried it everyway but right.

And then I put on my cowboy boots and that damned dress I had to have and sashayed it right in through the kitchen door...

Sometimes you've gotta put on your kickers to get that dust off of your petticoat....

Slow Dancing to Fast Songs

At 17, I did it barefooted and braless, Pink Floyd pinging off the neon walls. Climbed right up on the coffee table and danced, dipped, ca-chinged to the sounds of the cash register clanking...

Bubble eyed gold fished swam in the bathtub, lost in the psychedelic world we painted on their clawfooted world. Christian smoked a fat one. Strangers came and went. And the music played on and on and on.

And we danced.

At 19, I wore neon green platforms and borrowed white painter paints. I rubbed elbow to elbow, knee to knee, through a sea of strangers drinking nickel beer and danced up the steps and down again, Making grand entrances over and over again.

We danced....

In and out of my twenties,
in and out of revolving bars
into raging oceans,
waist high in midnight currents....

At 30 I danced out of one life and in stilhetto heels and a drippy hippy satin dress, danced right into my next....
Tom Jones and the Art of Noise....
The Kiss....
Off the dance floor and into a sea green pool....
Navy blue fabric, and tea stained lace floating,
swirling.....
And we laughed...

Until we cried...

And in slow motion, a gazillion years passed and I watched black and white re-runs...
the music slurring, blurring, getting buried under dust bunnies...

Until I remembered...

And it wasn't exactly like riding a bike....
It didn't come back all at once...

Not until I closed my eyes....

And danced again...

Sticks and Stones

For a moment,
a really really long moment,
I forgot....

What it was like to slide across my fake terraza floors, skating on the sand, under the heat lightning of a 1970's disco ball, a thousand strikes of a summer sky....

And dance...

My car stereo ate the last of Bob Dylan on a roadtrip through unamed cities, the computer spit out the Beatles with totally misplaced venom, and my Adobe crashed....hushing Mick Jagger forever from my playlist world....

And then...
I ordered 100 dollars worth of office sillies from a starving Office Supply Vendor, and they sent me the key....a little dime a dollar CD player with a thousand electrical cords dangling and a handy dandy remote player....

And I danced in a blues bar on an accidental night to accidental music...

And I remembered....

"You can't always get what you want,
but sometimes you get what you need"....

Even if it's the same old story....

Friday's are for dancing...