DANCE! DANCE!

About That Night At The Ballroom
By Clarence Bottums

The trappings of Trappists trip me up every time.
The ache of the atheist is no longer mine.
The eagle, the lion, the rose and the bee;
The platypus, the rhino, the emu and me;
Where you might fit, I haven’t a clue.
I get the feeling that neither do you.

Neither will I play a guessing game.
Or dote on the letters in your name.
The drinking, the smoking, the going nuts.
The samba, the tango, the waltz, the klutz.
I imagine we don’t have too much of a chance,
If this is how it goes when you learn I can’t dance.

Clarence, Clarence, O Clarence; perhaps it was inevitable that you would take a turn for the absurd. The gears of your watch-mending mind are slipping, and I can’t help but think that I am partly to blame. I shouldn’t have been so eager to skewer you with my wittified words. You might have been saved from dejection. If a man, or it looks like in this case a woman, has knocked you off of your game, the last thing a self respecting poet should do is grovel in it. You may not be able to dance like a fancy gentleman, but this is cause for rejoicing! They know the music, but can they be the music? You can, if you would just leave off with the self pity! As for your presumably doomed-from-the-start love affair with this dancing fairy: all of our love is doomed from the start. The sensible people don’t know this like you do, and they are better not to know it. You are not a sensible person, and so don’t bother with sensible scruples. It is your part in this play to play the fool. OWN IT MAN! For Pete’s sake, DANCE!