Dancing Remains

Starving cats shriek to a full, hopeless moon
The thick air drips with decay and rank ruin
Feral dogs scream, adding pain to the chorus
Extending an invite to those gone before us 

Fred Astaire and Miss Rogers they clearly are not
As they stumble and scrabble up through Hadean rot
Their eyes wormy sockets, foul-toothed, dangling jaws
Macabre click-click-clicking sounds a hellish applause 

Dry bones clack-clacking, grotesque, face to face,
Partner holds partner in hideous embrace
These skeletal dancers reek a rancid perfume
Unsure and undead, their lives re-resume 

Their clattering waltz is relentless and jerky
As they dance to hell’s music, unrhythmic and murky
The conductor’s malevolent, ghoulish, reviled
His empty eyes glitter, black flames burning wild 

Clarinets scrape the nighttime with fractals of silence
As violins offer melodies of mayhem and violence
Percussion and horns build a battlefield wall‘
Til there is no escape from the dead dancers’ ball