The tornado of sweating souls slowly catches their collective breath,

but only for the briefest of polite respites, for the pulse

is gaining speed and the heart rate quickens in time

with the drum stick, the judge’s gavel, taking issue

with the ones at the side of the pit, ready to hit-out

but too scared to throw themselves into the whirlwind.

 

The Mosh, once in, never released, never to be forgotten,

never to disclose that what happens in the sweating bounce

stays in the sweating, feverish, testosterone fuelled dance.

It is a ritual in which fall shy of ever competing,

some it ruins and the pity on friends faces is masked by taunting

pleasure of those with bruises that will never heal.

 

Not just caught in a Mosh, you’d never stumble into one for free,

but surrounded by heaving bodies, female, male,

all there to have the upper hand

and let the music flow over them in a disguised animalistic passion.

Heaving, pulsating, animated like gas bubbles caught in

the headlights of a shaken-up bottle of Lemonade.

 

The eye of Jupiter gazes up from the arena floor

and winks, enticing, beckoning, alive,

so alive that you want to be in the heart of the raging storm

that crashes all around you. Jupiter beckons,

Jove approves,

and the heat expands on and on.

Ian D. Hall 2015