Beep
…Static
Something’s…live
I felt it first in the finger
A tiny private flicker
A thought that escaped the chamber
And went straight to the trigger
Then the knee-cap A jump
A telegraph from a foreign land
My body writing a message
My mind doesn’t understand
I sit very still I command: Cease
A perfect porcelain peace
But the current’s in the basement
And it’s learning to increase
And it’s a chorea a chorea a chorea of the soul!
A current I cannot control!
It’s not a dance I chose to know!
It’s the buried thing beginning to grow!
A twitch in the smile a stagger in the step!
A secret the nervous system kept!
It’s breaking the vase to water the pet!
It’s a chorea a chorea—not a dance yet!
The doctor called it misfire
A short circuit in the quiet
I called it the ghost in the machine
Learning to riot
Now it’s in the shoulder a rolling tide
Now it’s in the jaw a door flung wide
My architecture is rebelling
My history is expelling
All the stillness that I sold
All the stories that I told
To keep the weather in
Now the weather…wins
Left eye Blink-blink-spasm
Diaphragm A caught gasp and then a chasm
Spine A lightning rod
Foot A tap-code to God
Hip A swing with no partner
Tongue A forgotten altar
It’s mapping the trauma in real-time
It’s making the private public pantomime
I am not dancing I am being danced through
The marionette strings are cutting you
So let it be a CHOREA!A CHOREA!A PURE RELEASE!
A final trembling holy masterpiece!
Let the limb find its language let the nerve have its say!
Let the tremor sing the psalm I couldn’t pray!
It’s not a breakdown—it’s a BREAK-OUT!
That’s what this shaking is about!
To shake the prison inside out!
A CHOREA!A CHOREA!A SACRED SHOUT!
And as the last spasm leaves…
A strange and unfamiliar…ease
The static clears The line goes pure
I am for the first time sure
That the war is over
Not won but over
The fault line has quaked
And what remains…is awake
Ooh…Ah-ah-ah-ah…
Yeah…It’s in the beat now
It’s in the heartbeat
It’s in the street-sound
It’s in the heat now
No more fight
Just…motion
My own wild electric ocean
Ooh…A sacred shaking blessed commotion
It’s my dance
It’s my dance
It’s my…
