Poems to Waxman S2 E6

The lights glimmer wetly, as if clutched in the sweaty, over-eager hands of children: like a hot hard candy, a plastic army man, a firefly. Sticky, poky, lush – flickering there, a dying breed.

When we reach the darkness, we no longer desire dancing. We waited for the darkness, we crept along the pooling nightlights of the street, seeking the darkness like a detective hunting along the seam of a wall for a trap door. And what a trap door it is! – when we fall through the darkness into the darkness – into more darkness, evermore darkness, a loud and feeling darkness. But by then, the music changed, and a melancholy has fallen over our crowd. We sop our tears with hankies, we line up in woe at the sight of it: the garish neon, the tasteful white, the loud humming projectors. We cannot dance. We will not dare. We shackle our ankles, nodding to each other. We thump and clank along in the darkness, feeling our way, shoulder-to-shoulder. We weep at the sight of it: plastic and wire and the steady pump of electricity in the shape of a man. We admire him, the jolly man as his hand waves back and forth, his face unwavering. No, we do not dance. It is not that kind of darkness.