Doing the Hustle

I find "The Hustle"
on a friend's "Pure Disco" CD
and burn it to my iPod.
With the door closed,
the lights dimmed,
and headphones jacked in
I finally push play.

Sultry, hushed voices
enjoin me to
"Do it!"
and a tweety flute,
a cheezy electric guitar,
and a not-altogether unpleasant
trumpet begin their silly melody.

"Do the Hustle!" the voices command
like Sirens,
and I am suddenly seven years old,
laying in my bed,
the Superman bedspread pulled up.
My parents are in the next room
playing records,
trying to learn this dance,
and the tango, and other last gasps
of form in modern art,
while avoiding the coffee table
and the black vinyl love seat.

Things that make grown-ups happy
are incomprehensible
and they can only be watched
like cloud banks forming on the horizon.

Tonight I am in many places and times
as the horn blows
and the strings and bells accompany,
and somewhere there is the sound of soft footsteps
and laughter - I am not sure of when they are
or I am -
"Do it!" -
but the clouds are pink and gentle
and beyond them is a safe sea.

**

Audio: https://anchor.fm/honest-chaos/episodes/The-Hustle-e10qh87

Every Night it's Just the Same (published in Shaking Like a Mountain)

Tom Waits and I
sit across the aisle from each other.
The train is moving again and
there is Rod Stewart
at the front of the car;
beautiful men and women surround him.
Light flashes on the walls
from an unseen disco ball,
He is singing Tom's song
as the steel wheels chatter
over seams and joints in the tracks.

Is it like this every night?
I want to ask
when I see Tom watching,
face smoothed of emotion.

But I know we all ask this question -
will I see you tonight?
Equal shares of hope and fear
as the "you" is filled in
with approaching faces and names
like stops on the downtown train.