Why I Can't Dance In Hell

•

I push the metal cart up and down the supermarket aisle.
Pile in processed food after processed food. I slide over
to the gym to lift weights, but since I've forgotten how to count
I can't get past the eighth rep. The rooms here are all square,
the computer keyboard is not in alphabetical order and
superheroes die just like the rest of us. In this place that I'm in,
all microwave popcorn gets burnt to black ashy nuggets
speckled with artificial butter. Newspaper headlines knock
on my door and scream their news while I sleep. The ambulance
in the distance is always coming for one of my children.

Here, I stand in front of the homeless person,
both of us in old tweed slightly stooped.
The question of whether to give him the two gold coins
that are squabbling in my pocket remains unanswered.
The person who knows such things is never around.

It is in this place that I perpetually ransack the corners of my house,
unable to find the diagram that has the dance steps on it.