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Index of poems: Making Fire - published in Rattle #15 American Acheron - published in 580 Split, issue3 2001 Canaries - published in Snow Monkey, Volume 2, Issue 2, 2000 Orpheus and Eurydice - published in Crooked River Press, September, 2001 The Lonelier Moon - published in The Pedestal Magazine Dali and Plath Make Love - published in Conspire Making Fire © J.P. Dancing Bear Even after this much evolution, the furnace goes out and she is cold again. I go out to the back of the house, with its spiders and mosquitoes, where the rusty gas pipes wait. I've tightened, lit, re-lit, banged and kicked, but no rock or bone in my tool kit works. I snort and swear at the metal box then look closer at the pilot and notice the stress crack. Now I know what to do, but I can't remove the rusted plate that prevents me from getting at the pilot. So I go down to the hardware store where other men with wide hands pick and prod among the pipes and boards, grunt and point their calluses at dream tools --they can't justify the cash. So they linger, tell their fantasy scenarios, --money no limit-- the things they'd build. I don't belong here; I buy what I came for and go home. In fading light I fill the crack with the metal repair goo. It's not pretty, and another guy might scoff, but I can smell cooking from inside and I know she appreciates the warmth of my fire. American Acheron © J.P. Dancing Bear conquistador headwaters then this European then another someone avoids the word "slave" but will use "savage" bloody like cotton or rum one tributary deserves another and someone misuses the word "freedom" and fires a shot into a crowd whitewater of cultures much displacement bend south or west flood over the farmlands rage new banks in that battle or this rebellion our heroes are calm surfaces dark fish swim in their souls silt of internment or reservation the mighty muddy sales banks industrious flowing to our delta of corporate uniforms Canaries © J.P. Dancing Bear My grandmother's hands are canaries ready to collapse in on themselves. I study her hand in mine: the thin skin, the purple veins and bones ready to collapse in on themselves. I am crying an afternoon of the thin skin, the purple veins and bones behind my attempts to be brave. I am crying an afternoon of my grandmother trying to communicate behind my attempts to be brave. I feel her hand slipping-- my grandmother trying to communicate after the stroke stole her voice. I feel her hand slipping to make the gestures lost in air after the stroke stole her voice, locked inside her head, left to make gestures that are lost in air Between us, locked inside, her head left, ready to collapse in on itself. Between us, my grandmother's hands are canaries. Orpheus and Eurydice for Jade © J.P. Dancing Bear So now he sings his song, not to some apocryphal god, but for the warmth of her. When they are together, after the fields have been sown, they write songs to sing in the City of Poseurs, laughing as they do at fools who have names made of clay. These reckless summer hours under a canopy of constellations; that one right there-- a dragon zig-zagging his mate. She knows every verse of his lips like each flower's name in the field of their love. The Lonelier Moon © J.P. Dancing Bear Armstrong has seen it from its sister. He wants to be with her: plant his red stripes, blue sky, into her. It is not enough to land on one moon knowing the other is untouched. Isn't that what the myths say too: the twin goddess persuaded by a trickster, drifted out beyond her sister's reach, fooled into solitude. Armstrong knows what it is to reach out for a god and come back a man. Dali and Plath Make Love on The Edge of a Cliff © J.P. Dancing Bear He looks like Peter Seller's brother, moving his paint brushes in and out, afraid of the open spaces where the light rushes in; and she's so dark in moods, a plummy jam of images. She dances for his curly mustache, his sweet madness. She is a Sheherazade of gray landscapes and jagged stones. Oh their lovemaking is as precise as a surgeon's scalpel slicing the belly or the chest -- it is watching their own blood pool in an aphrodisiac elixir, their green bottle-fly kisses and watch-dial eyes bring them closer to each other, closer to the edge. © J.P. Dancing Bear Host of Out of Our Minds - KKUP, People's Radio 91.5 FM, Cupertino http://www.kkup.com Editor-in-Chief Disquieting Muses http://www.disquietingmuses.com Owner Dream Horse Press http://dreamhorsepress.com J.P. Dancing Bear's Home Page: http://value.net/~dbear