Dark Dance with Duende

I don’t think I dance with Duende
I think it dances me
Like a puppet or a pawn
Pulling strings in lurching, frenetic movement
Or leaving them hanging
Tangled, still and flaccid

Do I drink darkness to dance?
Shall I go seeking shadows?
I’m half sick of shadows, she said
Far beyond half sick of shadows
Fully, 100%, in toto sick to death
Disgusted with phantoms
Repulsed by ghosts, wraiths, apparitions
And nauseated by numbing penumbrae
From staring at the sun
Trying to see the light

I’ve beaten horses that are throughly dead
Into submission
Smashing shriveled skeletons into splinters.
While side stepping the truth
As adeptly as Ginger Rogers
Who did everything Fred Astaire did
But backwards and in high heals
No one ever noticed Ginger Rogers
She was too damn good
Exquisite Irony

And this is my profile,
This is how I dance:
Backwards, blind, invisible
You’ll see the Duende
It is leading
Deep, black darkness - it’s the one in the
Spotlight

The Duende is not at fault
A totally blameless, dark, creative force
Which one wants to cultivate
But only in theory, only in thesis

You dance with Duende in reality
And no one wants to look
No one wants to walk on your razors
They don’t want to hear about blood

Bring forth the Angel, who you paint so beautifully
Provide the metaphoric flowers and butterflies
You are fully capable of, or
Be silent

I don’t know what Lorca
Believed in the end
About his struggle to bring
The dark force into
Being

He ended up in the glaring
Headlights of a parked car
With a bullet
Through his
Head

©Edwina Peterson Cross