Dancing to Xanax by Alan Walowitz

​Dancing to Xanax 
 
It starts with a pain in the small of the back
then shifts to the small of the night.
Poems heal in time, not in spite,
but at 3 am no sleep in sight
and the world moving right to ruin,
every pain, not dulled by intervention,
might as well be a poem.
 
Even the light of day will dim
as bright shields we hurl in space
promise to reflect the blasted sun,
cool land and sea, make it all alright. 
So, this could be the way for us
here on earth:  Turn down
the heat our bodies make--our minds.
A pill will make what‘s brilliant dull
and all time’s hurts will dissipate.
Only then will we dance as one,
hands pinned to our sides
neat as a page of butterflies.

​

Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry.  His chapbook, Exactly Like Love was published by Osedax Press.  His full-length book, The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems, is available from Truth Serum Press.  Forthcoming from Arroyo Seco Press is In the Muddle of the Night, a chapbook written with poet Betsy Mars.