I Wanted to Kiss the Moon

and then I didn’t and the window closed
so I wrote all night. There was a cold draft
absent and the stale air of the moonlight
bored like a drill into the shadows of my mind.

And I knew that I didn’t kiss the moon
and I knew that I didn’t want to but still the air,
the urge, the blank look of her eyes walked
up and down the walls and chuckled

through shiny teeth, through lush eyelashes
fixed to aqua eyelids and when the window opened
again, my heart stopped beating that fire beat
and settled like red, yellow, and gold leaves of Autumn
in the gutter.

Struck by the Moon (for Joe Pug)

on the airplane to Atlanta. This gut honest moon
that rips truth out of myth, out of garbage mountains
swirling and piling and covering the face of the Earth,
that takes words and twists them into something more

and then says words are just words,

that twists the logic of honesty and places it in perfect
three minute form, harmonica and guitar accompaniment
included, that digs up relics of history, digs up timeless
axioms and sings them from the lakes of Michigan,

sings them to be sung, that doesn’t care who is listening
but knows they are, knows that razor truth
cannot be ignored for too long, that strikes people
in the strangest places - on the bus, in the street -

when it shouldn’t be strange to be struck
but the righteous moon doesn’t come round too often.

Moon on the Ground Again

“If I didn’t own boots, I wouldn’t need feet.” - Joe Pug

and the wheels of the luggage and the clicks
and clacks of shoes and all that. But mostly
sadness. Because everyone misses someone
and if they don’t have someone to miss, then
they miss someone they don’t know yet.

And so mostly sadness. On the tracks
abandoned long ago, mostly, because we couldn’t
go where they could go, because the future paints
itself faster than the artist moves the brush
and time plays tricks on our lives.

The moon was in the sky but now it’s on the ground
again (beating like a lone heart unclaimed,
eternally riding the conveyor belts of baggage claim).

Moon Over Ramona Falls

She has apple on her leg and the pine needles
fall from way up in the tree tops one by one
in this place of falling water and the water
cascades down the wide, sheer face
of the cliff, over black rock, covered
in dark green wet moss and the sounds
of voices are distorted by the constant rain,
by the space and time in forest.

It is one view to say I want to have had
these experiences, it is another to say
this has happened in the past and the present
is but a mirage, a moment that happens constantly
and in every part of a waterfall, separately
and at exactly the same moment.

Fickle is the Heart of the Moon

in this cozy bedroom, humidified in memories,
changing directions without knowing why. And
in the absence of accompaniment, wants,
and in the midst of company seeks absence.

And justifies indecision easily, too easily, for
relationships take work, except when they’re easy,
and life’s difficulties are the most rewarding, except
when they’re not, and it’s not the end but the process

that’s enjoyable but so is the end, and of course
the smell of the chase, the taste of the chase, the thrill
of the chase that always drives in circles, that always
leaves you unsatisfied (whereas satisfaction also

leaves you unsatisfied) and so the answer still lies
in the question (or does it?).

Kentucky Moon (for Emily)

in Spain, purple nailed and yawning,
the big hat of history sadly vacant,
inconspicuously not there, the horses
plodding down Calle Generalife, ghosts
of a culture more and more less and less,
their manes stand up electric and their nostrils
sniffle a soft revolution that arrives with the night.

Here we are listening to foreign tongues
again, taking the world and spinning it
like a glass globe on the table, returning
to the old country on the heels
of a century inverted.

Here we are sitting in a classroom hunting
the trace of the future (as it has already gone
by like the smell of a garbage truck or a fawn
startled by the roar of a pick up on the road).