Poets that Dance

I visited the Milk and Honey House in Meligalas today.  Virtually, via YouTube.   I suspect Greece is a tad warmer now than here in Quebec.  I felt like going to Greece this morning for some reason, but not as a tourist.  So I looked up a poet who lives there because we share something in common.  We both love poetry, we both blog, and I remembered this little living room dance video he once posted way back when.  Vassilis was one of my first blogger friends when I'd just discovered 'blogging'.


Some poems "After Vassilis Zambaras's "Traces, inspired by this video:

[meaning, I ingested some of his original poems but re-poemed them here into an imagined scene where I'm sitting with friends at some public venue, I hear Greek music in the background, and just feel like getting up and dancing. . . but don't.  Not all situations welcome such unabashed gleeful spontaneity. So it's saved for alone times, in one's own living room or kitchen, with nobody but the cats to witness.  Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, I tried but am not on the same level as Vassilis. But I love the way he so carefully chooses each and every word in his poems, weighing their precise placement, which sometimes elicits multiple meanings that make you go back and re-see them.  I learn from this. So with apologies in advance, for re-"aftering" some of your formerly blogged  poems, Vassilis, here're some dance-scene-inspired interpretations, or "word re-choreographing" of some Trace poem excerpts.

No Stage Directions

Sitting in place

all stay.
Enter the muse.

None go, listening
but only his limbs
leap to.

One's enough -
group participation

unnecessary.

Reel life
being
real.

Take Two

No director here

just two legs starting to move
to a sudden rhythm.

The scene calls for

a dance.

Song

looking over

across the room

disconnected,

     reconnecting.

Each dances alone,
all together

Unstoppable

the dance was always there when

I needed it

until I forgot the steps.

Some things are just so in you -

you automatically
improvise.

_____________

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