What's love got to do with it
Maybe you've never seen Tina dance. It seems unlikely, but one can imagine scenarios.
Perhaps you were born late, or live where television is impractical—
what little music gets piped in only enough to construe a leg, a moment of bronze.
Never the full set, in motion, as it must be, to properly see Tina.
You could also be starving, or blind. That too would explain your missing her. But,
optimistically, maybe you saw someone else dance. Maybe a neighborhood girl
caught Tommy on cable in the bedroom of a rich man's son (just after fucking him).
For a week she was the Acid Queen and you relished anytime the drums played
making her dance, not knowing it was Tina, vicariously, you saw.
Or, VH1, years later. Or a week. These unseen dances occur in a strange way, striating
time like the muscular thighs of Tina. In Private Dancer she is really a whore.
(It's OK, I can't fault you if you didn't watch it at some time
and think about Tina—what those legs could do to your slim adolescent body.)
And of course, never having seen Tina—Tina dance—you could still know about Ike.
You could know about the actress who played Tina in a movie—
Angela Bassett—lean like Tina—who also played other women in other movies.
You could take all of these "versions" of Tina and with some effort,
extrapolate an idea: the idea of Tina dancing. It would not be real but it would be something.
(Immediately, you could see this as preferable to not seeing Tina. I mean, at all.)
Still, it would be better to hear her sing. Those legs, those famous legs—food for worms—
and who knows it better than Tina, screaming them night in night out.
Thoroughbred legs—you can hear them gallop anytime there's music. Racing—
even when she's still the legs fidget. They burn, I think, all the time. Even with the lights off.
Even when she stops being Tina and is merely a sleeping person.
It would be unwise to say it but I believe. If there's a purpose to anything—to starving,
blindness, exploitation, babies massacred on the freeways (and more,
especially, in China, India—those places they always told you about—really, anywhere)
it could only be to see Tina dance and appreciate that. (I mean, that could be you)
I know you've done some—in your mind. Think how swell it would be if all could see
you as Tina's seen. Not to get famous, but way before. Just wanting to dance, sing, and maybe
(just a little) to get good at it. Listen: it's about seeing you dance.
Kenosis:
or goodbye belief. Say it,
Tata, and enjoy. Say truth.
Say it with a measure of calamity—
a conflagration of wet and dry, a burial
of high and low. A grave, for shame.
Say things like, I have the wind let out.
I have lost sailors. I have, have, blundered.
No one expects it to make sense.
Now,
into a story, where, behind you, monuments
rise from the past and your episodes.
In this one, Neptune is attempting murder,
(Nobody) means you
and we (could ask) but
we won't. The beach is
made sandy just for that purpose.
Don't be nice, you have to survive.
On the beach alone sometimes
Beware they'll light fires
warn neighbors Hurry
Don't look
Hurry you have the wind let out.
Don't look you have monsters
called by name. You should
not have to run far.
Run don't walk to the nearest ditch.
Lay down you have
Lay down under you
full Wind. Nobody
says
Come we want this Nobody
we want you
by the bed. Beside our things. Nobody
listen,
had answers, open-mouthed, windy
when you asked from the mast, knots
apart, still lashed to the bag but not
invisible
(broken mast, ripped knots, fair warning)
Nobody did it, Nobody echoed
sea of stones mashed neatly killing
the men but No you said
not yet No
you wept
for Penelope, the Sirens
and climbed down.