Rock Singer Dies Onstage After Acrobatic Leap Gone Wrong
                    —Yorkshire Post Today (U.K.)

He died doing what he did best, the guy's wife
said afterwards—a grotesque misstatement,

since the lead singer of Bad Beat Revue
tried to grab a hanging light rig and lost his grip—

though in truth, his body just got in the way
of his intentions, and the other world never looms

when you're too young to go. Animals have
that streak. Rabbits run across the interstate.

Bees sting in a fervor-haze, abandoning
stinger, abdomen, nerve ganglion, and innards.

Some hearts were made to jump out of their chests
as the moon tilts down the sky. Accidents are

necessary: we are layers of layers that risk nothing,
never ready to give up the exile, the riot,

the beautiful slop. Some of us are suspended in place.
The rest are willing to endure what desire costs them,

to know its burn, what brief privilege afforded when
the vessel fails. They are the lucky ones—neither

cradling despair nor making light of it, tossing off
their wax wings and tumbling in feathered figure eights.

Copyright © 2006 Christine DeSimone All rights reserved
from 5AM
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission