I Saw Aphrodite and Adonis Dance

A lazy glance convinces me:
Tonight, the crowd is a sea.
The rhythmic thumbing that trembles the walls
vibrates this mass in a loosely compounded union.
The hands dance beside the stiff torso,
and the swaying legs are the waves of this ocean.
I stand at the shore, just out of this motion,
and I think to myself:
“Could the surface of this sea return me a reflection?”
And the response?
As if my idle thoughts acted as a special request,
in front of my dimmed eyes, this performance emerges.
Like Aphrodite, washed up on modern shores,
this girl dances in the middle, on a higher plane.
Seduction is at sight.
From the crowd enters a boy, fit to be Adonis,
already enamoured with our enthralling goddess.
It will soon begin:
21st century, sultry, romantic dream.

Adonis daringly enters the elevated plane.
In slow motion images he treats each frame,
as a challenge to Aphrodite, the maiden of dance.
Every step supposes a pose encapsulating his masculine stance.
The hair a lions mane, the eyes forged fires of passion.
Frame groomed, angelic yet strong, a Pegasus of human form.
Astonishing sight, he is life brought to marble stone.
And the seducing Aphrodite cannot be conceived by this world alone.
Her hair weaves amber and gold to a softened veil,
that lovingly frames the silhouette of a face so slightly pale
the light that shines tints her skin a shade of blue.
An image both heavenly and aquatic, she is both dream and true.
Aphrodite faces the approaching man, hands by her hips,
with an evocative smile, she meets this challenge of his.
Adonis draws her close, and in dance, the two bodies mould.
Bosom against chest, hands in embrace, this conquest does unfold.

But hold; there is something amiss.
As I continue to witness the scene,
this dance of godly creatures is far from serene.
As these gorgeous images of the human shape,
in their movements, reveal no grace.
Their legs stumble in the slightest of stupors,
sloppy movements amid the staggering sea of lovers.
Aphrodite whispers the sweetest words ever said:
“I’ll kiss you if you won’t spill my drink or ash my cigarette”

By the time the lips consume one another,
the romantic tune comes to a close.
I stare at a mere boy and a girl,
exchanging a kiss, including some tongue;
a night as lovers, a life as strangers from thereon.
Ashamed, I shrug away the saga of imagined myth,
and leave Adonis with his beautiful Aphrodite.
Only to find, a week later, Adonis asleep by the bar,
while Aphrodite dances in the arms of her Hephaistos.

By JPV

Copyright May 2005