by Sharon Bridgforth

(a ritual)
double dip step quick
and slide.
hips shaking booty quaking back snaking
twirl/front and back and front and back
clapclap
into the Light
party ova here
i am keeping time with hope
heal and toe and heal and toe and heal heal
Heal
knees bent
heal
arms raised
heal
heart open
heal
heal
Heal.

i am very busy

creating balance
in my Life.

holding never regainable moments lost to senseless acts of looking and hiding and looking
looking/for hope between the beats of unavailable beauties/dancing wide hipped honey-smiles/holding
too many drinks/one too many
too many times      reaching for unclaimable thoughts/full of self-selected doses of unreality/passing tim
e i juggle bits of my mind      mid-air/lose a little here
a little there
i
sleep walk through
Ancestral dreams/blood memories
and voices.

choosing badd.

with
threads
of
rage
bits of
fear
pound the
piece of sanity/i hold

i can not give a linear thought
to the issue of
creating balance

so i offer a word-quilt       woven pictures a glimpsing ride/an exploration of love/strength and laughter       unearthed by tear-born prayer

an experimental lament of some of the ways that
we survive
choose
and fight
in order to keep our Spirits
an create balance

where there is none.

please pray for those we've lost.