What we know for sure: It happened.
Historians blame psychosis,
or maybe it was poisoned bread.
Dozens, then hundreds, dancing in the streets:
salt-soaked and bloodied, epileptic, ecstatic.

Ceaseless, as though Death were up
next on their dance card. It began
with one woman wanting: That first
Frauline, frantic for release from
the terrible symphony inside.

I know the same chords. I’ve stilled
hot blood in splintering wooden pews,
sang absolution in narrow-aisled churches.
When the molten gold of desire
ran through me, I did not show how it burned.

In the end, the affliction was the cure. Dance
yourself free, doctors told them, and they did.
In red shoes at the shrine of St. Vitus—martyred

protector, prayerful and beatific in a cauldron
of boiling tar—they gave themselves over to it.

Salvation would not be found in restraint,
but complete surrender. Tonight, the summer
sunset pulls a cloak over the city and drives
me to the dark sanctuary of the dance floor.
On stage, silhouettes of queer joy never stop moving,

illuminated by strobe lights like ecstatic visions.
Death comes for us, but not yet. I am
among warm bodies and we are moving as one.
There is music playing that only we can hear.
Desire is a drumbeat that only gets louder.

So we dance. And we set ourselves free.