Tag archives: flutter

Sugar and Lies

Write a poem about living with lies.


We crawl the sky for top shelf lies
so many sweet butter promises
so light they flutter, almost free

but the floating lies turn to stone
and the sky let’s the lies tip down
forward and backward they twirl
Smacking past clouds
until they sink past the tree limbs
numbing in the crisp world
dipping through the grass
through the brush and dirt

under burrows they leak
bleak thunder blue
crusting our feet like snakes
from the cratered world we embrace
with eyes upward.

Milonga Man

“Granada for a tango festival. I was walking to the bathroom when this young hip black man caught my eye. He was siting in the lobby and looked up at me as I passed him. For some reason he caught my eye…what can I say. Then i decided I was going to ask someone I would never normally ask to dance. Just for shits and giggles (this is my strategy for keeping myself entertained here at the Spanish Milongas) So I went up to him, and started speaking to him in Spanish and he said, oh no, no comprendo. And I knew right away that he spoke English. Then I found out he was from new york and some tap dancer. I tried to dance with him and found that he must be a very good tap dancer for he had very strong muscles in his arms! Maybe you can write a poem about it.”


When I dance in the milonga,
I save my steps for special men,
the tango delicacies.

Some milongueros test me
with a deep rhythm of power
rigid moves, ancient grasping.

The young ones dance lightly
watching my dress flutter
swaying and sinking into beats.

During the cortina break,
a man met me with his eyes.
we talked in the hallway.

He brought new york here:
his clothes and voice,
a prize in Spanish land.

His dance was muscle car strong,
but it was not tango in full:
so the passion unbloomed- abrubt.