Buy a skull on a five-foot pole.
Glue negatives in the eye sockets.
Tie a cascade of film to its throat.
Crown it with bone beads.
Safety pin your mother’s hospital band
To the brown net atop a golden hem
adorned with blue beads, red bangles,
and green feathers.

Then wait.

When the time comes jump up.
Implore a death dancer
to join the improvised ritual.
Plant the skull-stick between you.
Take a deep breath.
Shake, moan, and bow.
Upturn the staff.
Turn death on its head
As a newborn unborn
Birthed by a drone
Transform it into a divining rod,
a navigational gyroscope.
The life force presses out on one axis
The death force presses in on another
Complex torques spin their cycles.

Dance to disambiguate death.
Materialize it’s finality.
Find a truer balance.
Trust the hole in the heart.
Do this delicate dance
Slow down.
Let it teach, tame,
tremble, humble you.
This is how to stay wild.

*A gyroscope is a device for measuring or maintaining orientation, based on the principles of angular momentum.^[1] In essence, a mechanical gyroscope is a spinning wheel or disk whose axle is free to take any orientation….its orientation remains nearly fixed, regardless of any motion of the platform on which it is mounted.