Tap-Dancing Hells

 

There’s a bumbling shadow

flashing across my moonlit bedroom walls,

a lanky fellow, in a top

hat and tails, tap-dancing;

badly.

 

He’s quite thin,

toothpick arms and legs,

but thick in the middle,

a distended belly of

sorts, shadily protruding.

 

I only sort of catch him,

if I’m glancing that way,

he may be a bad dancer, but he’s

quick on his feet and flees

my quick gazes.

 

I think he twirls a thin

cane too, but he’s too quick

to see all that well, plus he’s

a shadow, which are typically

poorly defined, as shadows go.

 

I think I saw him eating

a sandwich once,

a comically large sandwich,

even with the olive pinned

to the top slice of bread.

 

I guess all that bad dancing

must keep him thin, and yet

he can’t follow a beat and doesn’t

seem to understand rhythm.

It’s amazing, and terrifying.

 

There he is,

in my bedroom, leaping from

dresser to dresser as if he were

Gene Kelly, but never went to art school,

a black mass, step-ball changing through the night.

 

He’s haunting me,

he’s so undefined,

is he a ghost; or is it

just my mind, in the low light

of night;

 

Playing tricks on me,

while black cats whine and

cold winds blow autumn leaves,

scratching and scraping like long claws on

the cold sidewalks.

 

It’s scary to see him,

it’s unnerving that he might

be there, behind me,

in front of me, always there.

As I pull the bed covers up to my eyes.

 

A horror of wondering;

what if I’m him,

or even worse,

what if,

he’s,

me?