Ubiquitous Undignified Ponies

Unexpected! Tonight's the night of the performance, young people arrested in their harnesses. Strapped to ceilings.

Usurp! I fight the authority of gravity. The wall is my illegal country where my feet touch down. I command that which normally lies flat to the earth.

Up! I climb and suspend myself, arrested in my harness. It stops my fall, keeps my skull from cracking on the solid concrete "earth" that humans have so arrogantly created to cover mother earth's soil and natural floors.

Up! It stops my descent into broken bones, broken skin, and broken pride.

Under! ... and over I weave between the dancers, leaping and crawling under guide ropes that swing from lofty heights.

Unrelenting! My feet write invisible words on the wall, with each step-- words are left in silent footprints. Not fit to be seen, they write an article for none. No beholder to behold.

Unbelievable! ... a chrome pony standing there, majestically.

Unbreakable! The ropes hold me up, and I trust them.

Unwilling! I subject the ropes to my weight, arrested in their place by my body. Arrested by the pulleys, by the harnesses, by gravity.

Undeserving! As we on top are journalists with our feet tap-tapping, pad-padding across the white walls. How we defy the laws of gravity with human constructs; rope, metal, ladders, airplanes, helicopters, rockets; we resist, we are illegal, we are illegitimate for the opportunity to dance against gravity.

Unbelievable! ... a chrome pony standing there. I am the chrome pony. I have become a show horse in essence.

Unbelievable! ... that I prance in harnesses like a pony.

Unremarkable! How I start to resemble a harnessed beast with no control over my own body. There are no whips to start me, really, do I have no control?

Unwilling! But willing? I pull against the harness, tug against the bonds and move, in straight lines, guided.

Unguided! It is what I want to do, but yet the harnesses make my will illegal, and ever the obeisant beast, I follow my guides. I follow my paths. I follow the very path that exists so-and-such meters from the ceiling without deviation.

Unbelievable! I am the pony, prancing beautifully, guided by crudely fashioned bridles, bridles that are unfit to my grace.

Undeserving! Of this symbolism, for I am the artist, freed of gravity and its demands. Yet subject to a human will of how far I float above the hard, concrete floor. I am subject to the risk of falling at the whim of what holds me up.

Ugly! This blank white country I illegally walk upon. A quilt of colors encompasses the form of my face. How deformed my face is as I droop towards the earth. Expression flat as a sculpture with no true features, no eyes, just mock ones painted, no nose, just a ridge.

Unable! To fight the gravity that I illegally walk against, to resist its enticing pull, the nurturing embrace that which still caress my feet without rupturing my sides-- as these ropes do, digging into my fatty flesh, my body wishes to kiss the ground but the harnesses do not let me.

Unfit! In my sideways world, is this figure of human caricature, of blocks painted to represent someone like me. Unfit to describe a person who resists the natural pull of gravity, the illegal nature of my dance upon the walls, the perverse pony-play that I was not made aware of until I leapt across another dancer's ropes-- like a leaping show pony, now I, harnessed and bridled, am guided along a straight boring path to a destination that exists not.

Unfit! Really? But so many parallels; between my lack of control to gravity without bonds, and lack of control to these harnesses without gravity, exist. The wall an illegal canvas, the harnesses that allow me to animalize.

Uncontrollable! Am I in control? This is but an "illegal" thought I have where I control my movements. Gravity holds me down and these ropes hold me up. I am not sure where I should be, up or down. Guided to stand flat, guided to walk one path. Control is uncontrollable to this show pony on the wall.