Imagine the Moon

(from the Moon Series)

when you look up in the sky and it's not there.
Every bathroom has a mirror
except this one. You wash your hands
with soap, you look up from the sink to black
brick wall and shift in your stomach
as the vacancy swallows your features.

You've lost the moon for good
and what makes you so sure the next time
you look up into the black void
that giant sandy eye will hover
and glare and reflect and give you
the comfort that is the burden
on the search of every human vessel?

Typewriter Moon

(from the Moon Series)

You got to be kidding me with this weight.
You mean this is efficiency? You mean this is progress?

All that black ink and clicks and dings
and returns and newspaper rooms abuzz.

This passing phase and this orbit. Well pretty soon
that moon gonna be outdated, gonna be just a cratered machine

on the shelf settled under dust next to Russian air force
pilot compass and your grandfather's pocket watch engraved -

To my sweat love, never forget hat you mean to me.
You got to be kidding me

with all these worn out niches harboring ancient moons
in the forgotten shops of memory.

Moon over Berlin

(from the Moon Series)

What are you doing writing here?
This isn't a place for writers
in the chitter chatter bear breath night
with the moon over Berlin.

Get that filthy pen off the bar
and open that earmouth of yours. Swig.

You hear the clinking of the glass
on the counter? Of the coin and the pitcher?
You hear those wheels a spinning?
You see the revolution at the heels?

What are you doing writing here?
This isn't the suit you want to wear. Swig. Chunk.

Look around. You see out those windows?
That snow? You hear those heartbeats slow
down? This is no place for poetry.

Take you words to the dungeon
where the laundry machines are.
Take your concepts, your ideas,
take your travels, your pictures,
take your tickets, your conversation,
your memories, your patience,
take all that progress, those 3 dimensions,
take them all and burn them down. Swig.

Moon Monster

(from the Moon Series)

Lump in throat Tuesday, a faint throb,
a glance at watch, only seconds left.
A swallow

and the night turns ink black.
The hunted uncuffed. The worms
cool their bellies on the rails.

The winds blind crash into trees
shake skeleton monkeys to the ground
in a clatter like unhinged keys
of a piano, waterfall of bones
down a spiral staircase,
the penguin teeth merge in symphonic

sustain. Fingers brush stubble neck,
push down gulps. Moon pills
and damnit yesterday is lost

to the bowels of memory,
the furnace of the moon,
la luna nueva y vacia.