Dance Myth "The Shapes We Make"

2025

1) Gentle, Gentle

  We are not just the sum of who we’ve been. All of us. Complicated angels. Strange, and beautiful, and weird of a kind. The world is magic how else can it be?

Be gentle. Gentle!

  When the pain gate opens wide. Swallows us in whole. Building the things we are gonna need, but we can’t see it yet. Some kinds of lightning don’t want to be seen.

  We get jump-started into this thing, with a purple rain storm, and end up with a grey heart full of rocks.

  Busy on our way to right now.

  Speeding towards this second.

  Showing up early for the next one.

  Pushing us to our next meaning.

  Different, every time we try.

Gentle now.

  We are not just the sum of our mistakes. We live so many lives, in a day, and we numb most of it away. Forgive yourself. If you can. For who you you’ve been. You didn’t know then.

  I have spent most of my life running. As hard as I can. Breaking things, and then try to fix them behind my back. So you can’t see the mess I’m making. Here, can you fix it?

But be careful. Careful!

  This is all I get. I’m gonna make mistakes, and then mend, and then do it over and over again. Maybe forever. Try to show my work while I’m working it out.

How else do I do this?

  We are not just simple math. We are a library of surprises inside a maze of last stands.

We are magic. We are Magic!

  The echoes of our foremothers. Writing trains. Following where they lead. Stretching words over a life, written in water. It’s as simple as a circle. I was raised by holding on and living in it.

  And it might not get any easier than this, but Love. It’s worth all you’re fighting for. Especially if it’s for yourself.

  Complicated angels. You are everything. A soaring revelation inside of your circle. Returned back into you.

2) The Light

  Can we agree to not fully understand, and let that be? We can feel how temporary this whole this is, yeah? The wet paper frailty of being human. Inside our hand me down perspectives. Fragile and thread bare. Loose leaning against each other's loose meanings. Full of holes, and worn through.

  We only get away with this for so long. Trading our time for some coins to throw in a well. But I am still water, and this is still life, and I am still mine.

  I am a bomb rattling in my chest.

A hammer, crashing through. A mountain of failures. I am, the whole sun. A sputtering star. A hung breath disappearing. I am an exclamation! An idea machine. All the colors combined. Outlined. With both Hands open.

  Writing love notes to myself. About the lights in my life. From sun-bright, to pink cotton. Around, again, for another try, and then take off in every direction. Glowing through all the shapes I make. Through the copper holes in my heart. A punctuation of light. Aflame, electric, in every direction. Look at what your light did now.

  I keep writing love notes to myself to: Write about joy! And the ways I follow it. And how much I’ve grown to know that Love is the first letter in acceptance, and change, and you!

It’s there if you’re looking for it. I promise it. It’s inside of you.

Already.

  You Daredevils, & dreamers. Rolling under a turquoise mountain, crackling into the night.

Another. World. Is possible.

  If you want it. If you make it.

  You Pioneers, pushing your miracle around the pavement. Sparking, and scraping. Escaping into your shapes. Spinning, and Wide eyed. The inventor of your worlds. A body underlined a thousand-thousand times. Strapped to the front of the ride. I can see “it” all over you. Marked by all the births you’ve been through, to get you here.

You grew some more today.

  I keep writing these love notes to myself to: Say about the fire that was put into me to heal, when I didn’t know how to. Got talked into dimming down. Forgot how to fly. Didn’t think I could. Cut my hair boring. Couldn’t sing every word.

  But my Friends-in-Love. Pulled me up from my free fall. Helped me burn every bridge to light the way to what’s next. You reminder mountains! Pushed me back onto my volcano, and we rang out. We rang out like iron bells hung in the arms of oak trees, and carved the words "keep going”. And so I keep exploding out in every direction. Like the sun. Young and love. Saying songs about what became of that boy! Wandering out loud. Trying everything, and then give it all away so there’s nothing left to lose.

  Staggered blocks. Little probletunities. On the edge of an impossibly wild ride that I won’t survive,

  I have been alive before, and I’ll be alive again. And I’ve been dead too, and I will die over and over again. Spread out In every direction. Like the sun.

  So, If you are alive. Raise your hands. Keep them open. Reach out for anyone.

3) Little Bird

  It all started in a hospital bed.

when they made up the words to say you were gone. Said you didn’t make it, to where we were. As if where we were was better.

  So I fell down backwards inside my bottom lip. Collapsed into a dead weight black out. Spun myself into a thread, and backed out of all my stitches.

  I woke up inside the tv. Toes on the edge in the brake dust. Left shoulder baked in a lightning bath. Head dull and grainy. When all the air pulled out and stopped.

  I was a little wet bird, walking around a forest fire. Seat belted right next to a bruised miracle. Sat behind a woman broken into a thousand ways to say: Never Give Up. So she didn’t. You had a sea glass halo. Pinned to a cloud with wishes kisses.

Surrounded by your loves. Waving goodbye. Singing something about leaving, but it wasn’t in a language that we worry over.

  We built a world and colored it. Cut out cardboard castles to candle light. Made up songs to sing joy through our greys, and our whites. Smiling inside of October. And when that second Christmas came we held each other's gifts. The sky wept, and we haven’t been the same since.

  I wasn’t ready to do the dance that everyone else seemed suited for, in my magic light blue suit. Quarters coming out of my ears. Both hands filled with shape of your absence.

  Sorry, you couldn’t make it, to where we were. As if where we were was better. You were gone, to everywhere else. Back into the air we breathe. Back into everyone I meet. Carrying the zero. Sharing your math. Smiling at all the joys that came to you.

  And most days I can’t stop waking in circles. A head full of brake dust. Alive at the wheel, through the morning rays. Shining through all the shapes we make.

  So I sit on that road. One arm in a sling. Where the wind goes over the wing, and open up my mind up as big as it will go. As big as this floating globe. Push my soul through my teeth,

and stitch my way back to home.

  I wake up inside the tv, and see a little wet bird asleep in a hospital bed. One wing longer than the other, and a life opened up as big as it will go.

What an unending place.

4) Waking Up To Your Island

  You are a failure miracle. Brand new, again. A rising sun. Exactly, everything you need, and enough. Writing out your morning song.

  You are the answer, inside of a long exhale. A lighthouse rib cage. A future up for grabs, and the brights are on.

  There is a point inside of you. A light, a start, a shy, quick, quiet, deer heart. A lighting storm. One Machine for rain, and the other for change. Buried in your covers, in color. A new day tapping at your eyelids. My shy, quick, quiet, deer hearts.

  You are a failure-miracle. Tangled in truth. Folded around with love. Plugged back into yourself. Waking up to your island.

  You are a self governed machine. A harpoon, launching. A bell rung against the collective order. An entire world rising. Brand new, again.

  You failure-miracle. Still, and silent. Stretched to your horizons. Up at dawn, waving your existence. A pride swallowing siege. A hug, instead of a hammer. A spark, inside of a room. On top of all this dirt. Dressed in your first day of school, innocence.

Shy, quick, quiet. Suited in universe.

  The divine. Tied to the present. Making it through the night. A metaphor for infinity. A waking celebration, bathed in light. Waking up to your island.

  You failure-miracles. Brand new, again. Remembering, and forgetting, and remembering. Quilted together. Burning the past for change.

  Into this moment, and this one, and the next one, and the next one, and this one right here. The most important moment of your life are all the ones you are inside of. Brand new, again.

5) Make it until I make it

  I keep telling myself, that I keep telling myself, that I keep trying. But I’ve been forgetting again. Forgetting that it’s happening. This presence of awareness. A closeup of clarity. What a wake!

  I shouldn’t have to remind myself. Again. That this is not a rehearsal. There is no script. Our lives mix poorly inside each other sweating badly to fit.

  Making it until I can make it.

  I have never done this before. How are you so sure? We are given once our hearts, and our bodies are sinking ships.

  Bailing out the bad parts.

  Looking for the laugh.

  Bracing for the launch.

  Hanging in there, waiting for the universe to show up.

  Breath held for an answer.

  Life pushed to the side.

  Right hand lit up like a Christmas tree.

  Pointing at the truth, in our hearts, where it’s always been.

  Making it while I figure this out.

Still. I’m still figuring this out. How are you so sure?

  Time, is how we count the things we waste. But that’s easier said than done. Life has this way of coming around. Hope mixed with waiting it out. It doesn’t make sense now, but long games are sure things that let us figure it out.

Figure it out!

  Even if it’s just inside of me. There’s no better place put the plow. Inside all the caves I make. On the other side of my moonbeam. Squinting, forehead first. At the bottom of the world. Where all the oceans meet. Anchor in the air, outlined in sun.

  Making it until I can make it on my own. And I keep trying and trying. How are you doing this?

  And just to be sure. I have never done this before. Like right now I can feel my heart pulling at the reigns wanting to change. Like it’s done hundreds of thousands of times before today. And sometimes I follow it. And sometimes I weigh it down with whatever I find laying around

that will keep me from the pain of change, from the change of pain. Am I doing this again? It’s gonna take a lifetime to get it out.

Get it out!

  Like when I was young, and there wasn’t this weight of perspective, and time moved slower than the growing pains. Going to sleep when it was still light out, with tears in my eyes. There was always so much more to see.

  Making it. While I try to Make it.

  I have never done today before, but I’m willing to try it again. Clawing at the bark. Trying to feel something.

  Making it until I make it.

6) This Accordion life

  You don’t know me. No one really does. That’s just the shape of smoke

from setting myself on fire. Lit from the inside. Floating above. If you want problems get a future and survive it. No one really does. Tomorrow is terrifying. The past is terrifying. But in the right now, right now, right now. Right now, I am aflame.

  Inside of a life coming apart. At home in a minor key. This accordion life, with you.

  I was holding back the porch on a Halloween weekend. Sun-set in my eyes. We Had a fire on. Played a new tune on the keys. Kept thinking about jumping, or spreading out. Always leaving something behind. Even the kindness of absence. Or a clear head. Or my cannonball heart. Stuck inside a crack in the sky. Inside a forced answer. Rolling my Rrrrrs. Packing the anxiety furnace. Racing in slow motion.

I will always be.

  A presence carved in wake. A better version of yesterday. Four thousand weeks away.

  I found the words I wrote in the back of the van, pushed into the seat. The one we kept for sleep when we were out for months on the sea. Melting and folding myself back into me. I told myself: that getting better means I have to keep going, and so I did.

  Inside of a life coming apart. Right at home in a minor key. This accordion life, with you.

  I’m better alive. Waking to your absence. While the weeks go by the window. Outside that hospital garden. Inside a dead end. Working at forgetting about it.

  It’s embarrassing. All the times I’ve hidden, or was made to feel I should hide any of the ways I shine. Told everyone I’m fine, and believed that lie myself. Into one more fall, and then another, and another one. Until I’m falling again. And giving everything, every time, everywhere. Stretched to the edges of me. Surrendered to the exhale. Sanding down the shimmer. Leaving what makes this scary, and stunning. A mirror to what I’m becoming.

  You don’t know me. No one really does. That’s just the shape of smoke. From setting myself on fire. Lit from the inside, floating above.

  Inside this life coming apart. At home in a minor key. Out of all the things that I’ll miss the most inside this accordion life. An entire heart away. I’ll miss the fall, with you.

7) Playing Pretend

  We all woke up one day. A light, turned on. Into our existence. Into sound and cold and confusion. Just like everyone else who has ever done this. Even the ones of us who have touched the sky. Shoved right into a

costume that will never fit. And every day is halloween, clashing against our

intuition.

  We all woke up one day. Every. Single. One of us. Looking out of our miracle. Bolted to reality. A metaphor for a mystery. Loved by the wonders that made us. In their own ways, that they learned how. That got hammered into them, by wolves, just trying to make it.

Playing pretend.

  We all wake up one day. Blanketed in fear. Collared with reality. Get given a dog in the fight by the wolves that raised us. They said: Our imaginary friend, it’s better than everyone else’s imaginary friend. Dug those walls right into us against our better sense. Tied our balloon to a closed down mind, and family and worth.

  We all wake up one day. With everything we need already inside of us. And still take someone else’s word for it. Willing to hold that as truth. Instead of listening to our own. And point that thing into our inevitable. Writing the answers on our sails so we don’t forget again.

We are all playing pretend.

  We will all wake up one day. Just like everybody else does. Just like god did. You can see her everywhere, in every thing. I don’t use words when I pray, that’s a waste of the answer. I keep my hands and everything, open. That’s where the answer is, in the open. In the wild, dull sparkle. The space between heaven and hell is the distance between faith and doubt, in ourselves.

  We will all wake up one day. Into our existence. Powerful miracles wrapped in skin. Pushed down by drink, and age, and the learning that we can’t. Shamed smooth by our mistakes. Forgetting our accents, and the roads we learned on. But we are who we pretend to be. So don’t just do

something. Sit there, and think it through.

  You could die at any time. But then again you could live at any time too.

8) Glass Maze

  Right outside of here is where we smash against each other. Skin on skin. Skinny straw blades against the storm. Bending the hard way. Mistakes on high. Young and old, graceless. We have no chance, and it’s only in our minds that we have no choice. There is always choice, we always have it. Welcome to life.

  Entire libraries built inside of people have been lost. Keep making.

  Bend your life into anyone you can see. Forehead against forehead. Spilling everything inside our frail machines. Full of stupidity. Distracted with Energy. Weighing us down with enough hope that we might have a chance to stay longer.

  There will always be change to teach us balance To show us common sense. If we’re willing. Person against person. Bringing us back to learning. Where shame lifts like a curtain, and it’s our time to dance. Have you had enough flailing?

  Take time to be kind, and also to yourself. Build the future, together. With your hands, with your loves. Pounding time into its permanence. Folding it on top of itself. Our skin made out of sandpaper, wearing each other down until we're shorter, worn down with memories, and the choices we've decided on, or passed over, or lucked in to. What a mess. What a thing. What a life.

  We are all playing pretend. Crashing into each other. Waking up with brand new hearts that only work when we make them die over and over again. Inside this glass maze. It’s the only way, and that’s just for today.

9) Dry County

  I was in the dead center when the sky turned green, and a pile of shoeboxes shook their contents loose. Into blue envy. Onto wet power lines. Lonely strangers in a gravel ditch, right over there where the firewood used to be stacked.

  I held Up my neck like a wheat stalk. Blood orange and burnt red. Waving inside an Arkansas sunset. Waving like I had to go. But I was out there stuck in the rain. Talking about the weather,

and I couldn’t see the sky, except by ambulance light. Flickering against the smoke. Like A bird on its way. On a scarecrow. Protecting what’s in sight.

  It’s all lost. It’s all for nothing. It’s gonna to be alright.

  And I was waving. Waving! Waving like i had to go. I was right there waving like i had to go. Waving, like i had to go. And so I went.

  I left half a cigarette next to a spider web. I had other things to do, and never looked back. That’s useless as coffin paint. Inside another All nighter. A full head, and sandy. Fingers interlocked in the legs of that thing. While the leaves crawl out from their branches.

  Racing our trains down the highways. Nnext to the trains we sleep to at night. Racing through our thoughts in the pitch black. Lit up by headlights and hope. Under the sheets washed at half strength. Inside that motel with the chainsaw angel. Holding a sword above a sign that’s never said "no”. There is always room for those who fight.

  It’s all a blur. It’s all a lie. It’s gonna be alright.

  And she was waving! Waving like she had to go. She was right there waving like she had to go Waving, like she had to go. And so She left.

  We held hands. Leaned ourselves into the future. Joined the parade from the train bridge, and swam the lake. Made promises to our shadows. What a kindness. Putting our pieces together while the leaves stretch out on their branches. Smoothing our edges,

learning where our county lines lie. A blanket of mistakes. With good Intentions, and bad memories, and a god dam in our hearts.

  A ghost, inside of a man, inside of a room. Watching the leaves fall for their own reasons, without a fight.

  Cuz it’s all over. It’s all a mess. It’s gonna be alright.

  You were waving like you had to go. You were right there waving like you had to go. Waving, like you had to go. You had to.

  And it may be comforting, or scary, or both, or none of it. But one night in the hands of death. There will be a sign with your name on it tied to nine balloons, and it won’t ask if you’re ready to go. Son, your ride is leaving.

10) Read This Before You Die

  It’s ok to float. Heal up and push through. But today isn’t for quitting. Happen to your movement. Birth the fight and spend it. You’ll make new ways without the people that came with you. They’re busy on their own.

  Someday is now, somebody is you. You are all you get. For your entire life. Always thinking you have more, and then one day there won’t be. And you’ll have lived a life brimming with existence or filled with excuses for why you didn’t.

What are you using this for?

  The world doesn’t owe you, or own you. This stage was here before

you. Ok, so you’ve had time to figure out what hurts, or that you can be. There’s. More. Ground to work. Push it over. Keep the mind moving through it. You’ve come by it honestly. Even if you don’t land well. Take a few breaths and grow. Keep growing! More today than yesterday. As much as you feel you can stand. Plant everything you can. Even if you won’t be around to watch it grow. Sleep it off, or year it off. Drop your shadow. Start over. Ball up, and then stand up. Keep the shadow if it helps.

Show yourself.

  Today has its ways of demanding your presence. Keep digging. There’s more to give. Don’t be afraid to bite at what’s keeping you there. Repave it, rework it. This is it. This is all you get. This is your reminder.

  Stop comparing your miracle to everyone else’s brick wall. Today isn’t for quitting. Heal up and push through. Happen to your movement. Birth the fight. You are alive. What a thing to be alive, to be anything at all.

  While the piano plays, and the money gets counted, and the pain gets folded into gratitude gets folded into your day.

Everything. Has. A turn.

  You earned this. You are a time machine. The echo of your ancestors. Always on the way, and enough.

Read this before you die:

This is it, right here.

This is all we get.

There’s nothing else.

You are it, in this moment.

Pay attention.

Be kind, to yourself.

Follow your own map.

Wake up and keep trying.

11) The Shapes We Make

  Two lines meet in the middle ‘X’ marks the spot. Gather round. Oh the shapes we make when we intertwine.

  Hold me down. Don‘t let me move. With your finger on. These frayed edges. Jumping through the hoops. Tightening what’s loose. On our shoes.

  So tie me up. Well I’m rattling again-again. Tongue tie me up. Cuz I’m babbling again my friend. Don’t tie me up. I’m out here traveling again. So tie me up, untie me, tie me up again.