Limbo: a chapter from the autobiography

i.

Perhaps I had to bend to spring back up.
If my grandma loved me too well
and my grandpa called me Dan-up,
then I needed to see how the apple of someone’s eye
might be a Red Delicious—
how I dislike Red Delicious apples,
a half-misnomer, I reckon.

ii.

Perhaps I needed to bend back to spring back up,
to climb alone up the boulders under the bridge,
to write about my loneliness reddeliciously,
to fumble an embrace,
to walk alone past the beachside births
built of driftwood, a neighborhood of those
who belonged, me feeling the strain.

iii.

Perhaps it’s the strain,
the discomfort of passing under the hurdle
that tenses the body for springing upright.
Perhaps it knew what it was doing all along
while this late-blooming mind clung on
through the final dip—changing it’s name—
to Danup, to e., to Frank, to Gertrude—
before relief flooded in and—
took myself a bow.

iv.

Perhaps the song
was in my ears
without my ridealong mind
hearing it; perhaps
my body knew
the dance all along—
and knows!

v.

Quizás, quizás,
kiss my ass, ridealong mind.
My ass knows exactly what it’s doing.
My ass never questionmarks itself
midflex
nor wonders if it dips correctly.
My ass sure can dance, word
up!

vi.

The moments fell in chain reaction
in and around my life, 1995.
Suddenly, friends at my side.
Suddenly, bowing silently out of the party I had crashed.
Here, a body close beside.
Here, the taste of a purpose
walking on a sidewalk.
I pivoted on a city and a time,
my body flinging up.
Flung.

viii.

My body is one of these upright things
that grows in a clump.