Autumn Dance
When J. Otis Powell! and Autumn Compton began their collaborative pieces, I was mildly unconvinced. Were Autumn’s shimmies something for a spoken word show? J. Otis’s playful accompanying piece, about the dance of autumn/Autumn was my assurance that once again, there were different ways for spoken word to be collaborative and playful, and then Autumn followed with her own words, to demonstrate that her talents were not restricted to white fringe.
Spoken Word Celebration ration
AUTUMN DANCE
by J. Otis Powell‽
I knew before my teens
If I was going to hang out with the Cats
And mess around with girls
I’d better learn to dance
I never knew how much was required
Or how long the music would last
I didn’t know how to catch
A segue before being trapped
On a dance floor or
Lost in drum and bass
One night - mid September
On a dance floor with speakers
The size of compact cars
My body remembered
More than my legs could comply
My torso swayed like a pendulum
Before my hands reclaimed finger popping
As filler for flow I used to know –
If only I could remember the Boogaloo
I played cooler than I really was
Hipper than I ever happened to be
Dancing is like acting that way
Conjuring something beyond one’s grasp
Hoping air will float one’s feet above ground
My body needs attention
Her body gets attention
I'm preoccupied with mind and soul
Because my body is a leaky building
Packing boxes with no sides
For a moving day
To rooms without walls
To dance without floors
She, full-bloomed woman with tribal training
Invented from a next stop new repertoire
Her grass is green my leaves are brown
But everything new has old stuff in it
So I grabbed a familiar gesture
And tossed it back to her - she smiled then kissed
My eyes with hers - I sucked air and shook
What leaves I had left because
In dead of winter nothing moves
It was still autumn and dying was not yet dead
It was Autumn whose skin looks like something
Creamy to drink
I’ve had sips at mirages of memorialized images
And I wouldn’t mention it but I’m thirsty
When I remember her it’s first her face
Which starts its narrative before lips part
0nly trust eyes a mouth in my head said
Epidermis talks too much
And it turns the stereo up loud
Epidermis repeats colonial narratives
Then calls the cops
I'm here with you in our world her eyes said
In our Oneness
Mouth dancing to music our poetry makes
Finger writing what words can't carry
Wondering under our breath how long
We can extend moments
Into something more meaningful than a dance
Something less trite than romance
And you're here with me breathing on my soul
I thought
Staring at my aura wiggling and giggling like a school girl
Putting some of your eggs in my basket for a picnic
She is Autumn with picture frame hair –
Soul piercing eyes
And legs that make spider webs
Way in the middle of the air
We’re trapped on a dance floor by
A power in us yearning for wholeness
A drive to give meaning to our mediocrity
Form to our impoverishing formlessness
Imagine, as I did watching Autumn dance
A dense universe moving for the first time
Shifting, to lose her grip, converting
From inertia to motion
Those weren’t merely Autumn’s hips in motion
The unsentimental cosmos was learning perpetuity
And choreographing a world
Deborah Jordan Bailey
Mon 7th Nov 2011 13:01
excellent..love this one..says so very much..
"Dancing is like acting that way
Conjuring something beyond one’s grasp
Hoping air will float one’s feet above ground"
i can feel the beats...keep them coming : ) Deb x