JO THORPE

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HOW TO DANCE YOUR OWN BODY’S LEGEND

(after reading about butoh)

Choose the site carefully. Find one that will hold you
inside nuance. Create your own mise en scène,
you before the watching tribe huddled in the dark,
breath the parent rhythm. Enter the Now,
shade the many nows, then dissolve the separations.
Move through the animal (raw flesh, blood on the jaw).
Make room for the bird, the fish, the horned bull
in its draughty cavern, holding sway. Follow the wind-spool.
Then, when you’re nearing core, embrace the beautiful danger.
Watch how it grins and glares at you, that blur
at the edge of field, blur on the edge of shape – find the
keel of it, the red that pecks, the claw angling for the back.

Back, safe, from the flight through the intuitive,
resist even now the wanting-to-be-calmed,
the ‘clear-lit custody of knowing’. Furrow-up the stone path.
Lick your way through the glittering city (its fabled glass).
Play in the slipstream. This is how the story opens.
This is how the necessary heat rolls in.