Title: Buffy to Spike: A Waltz
Author: Karabair

You came with red wolf's eyes,
Brute fangs, the will for bleeding.
A curse sprang from your prize,
Forged chains that bound while freeing.

This choice -- ours, yours, or mine?
The thorn can love the rose, then.
What trials can I divine
To let me be unchosen?

But if some butterfly
Flaps wings in distant lands.
We, random, live or die -
No help then - take my hand.

We call it choice, or chance.
Which naming best defends
Our mad, wild lockstep dance?
Which name will help it end?

We dance on, never easy,
Unceasing, bold, and crazy.

Form, not content, based on

My Papa's Waltz
Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.