The guy at the second urinal looks nervous.

Mr Carver, thanks for the dance.
It made this seriously hung over reader almost laugh his headache away!

Cheers
Serge

One day Tess,
(known to Friendly Fire as Tesseract,
a four-dimensional cube)
walked into an imaginary bar
feeling as if she didn’t exist
outside the box where her Avatar
banged her head daily
leaping frantically for freedom.

She slung her fuzzy-leg-warmer-legs
(the envy of ALL )
up and over the bar stool
ready to order a Fuzzy Navel to match.

Above, a glowing Heineken sign
blinked off,
then on.
She counted twenty-five
“on” blinks when her concentration
was busted by a throaty,
“Care to dance?”

A grey tweed sports coat
flew up and over his shoulder
as he unbuttoned one, two, three
buttons of a silk shirt.
(In the dim light it looked magenta.)

“I’m not very good,”
she croaked, looking into his good eye.
He said he’d be the judge
and then bolted to the
men’s room.

She could feel the tension
brewing in her belly.
The only dance move she knew
was a leap,
which thankfully froze itself in mid air.
(She had no idea what to do after landing.)

She stood,
her eyes blinking,
open then shut
twenty-five times
open,
until she realized
the Bee Gees were playing
and she should take a practice run
before Austin Powers returned.
She swayed on the dance floor,
started to move to “Staying Alive”
and grew braver
as the crowd settled around her.
Suddenly, one of her
fuzzy leg warmers
slid down her bony leg
and caught itself
on her wobbly Stiletto,
sending her sliding into
a waitress who dropped
a tray full of Rum and Coke
all over her pink neon leotard.
She stood as drunken eyes laughed.

The disco ball,
the parquet floor
the jukebox playing G57.

She downed the Fuzzy Navel,
sent a small belch on its way,
grabbed a pen off the bar
and scribbled,
Not in this lifetime, Buster,
not for all the John Travolta moves
a dance floor can hold,
adding the name she’d shared
with all the sailors from those Seventies…

Brandi, with a heart above the i.

@ Tess

The only dance move she knew
was a leap,
which thankfully froze itself in mid air.
(She had no idea what to do after landing.)

I cannot but echo Carys here: Brilliant!

The two of you should do a comedy routine at a bar somewhere.  I'd pay real money! (as opposed to the virtual kind)

mel.


PS actually, this makes me think...perhaps we need a collaboration forum, or if not a forum, a thread in poetry discussion or somewhere,....this sort of thing is way too fun. 

I'm not gonna lie to you, my wife is looking at me with something resembling concern as I sit laughing at my laptop.  I think I better give my third-person Carver routine a rest in the interest of promoting harmony in my non-virtual existence. 

Thanks for the good-sport retort, Tess.  I was envisaging Flash Dance for your character, but now I'm not so sure.  C.

Dear Carver-man,

How can we appease your wife?

There is no way (NO WAY)) to do without the  3rd-person carver. I need him like my daily boo... bread.
Tell here!
Show her and make it an issue of pressing importance! Please   

In deep grief  (de profundis so to say)

the Serge