A Cycle of the Moon

Along the Crescent Waxing I'll let my spine concave,

and seated for days I'll drink green tea and gaze:

The blue marble's storms, the flux of temperature

ever re-creating the greatest of all wars.

At First Quarter I'll lay spine straight with desert sages,

and listen to their portraits of every headache wasted.

Dead questions: Should I? Shouldn't I?

Elegies for ghosts across the ages.

Gibbous Waxing, my feet in clay oceanside. Candlelight

pours out the dippers. Quicksilver floods the canyons

cracked inside my eyes. But-wait-no-lady-STOP!

I am not ready to die.

Gibbous Waning, and

my dreams didn't kiss me hello like I planned. Where

did Grandma's smile go? There's no body left

in my head who knows.

Last Quarter and I couldn't look up, cause last night

I drowned my twin under Rock Bottom Bridge. The police they

took me in. Your Honor, please understand, he was an evil man,

a gambler who threw children off Rockefeller Ridge.

Blink and my young hands all livered with wrinkles. The bars

not so other anymore. On some static nights I picture

the Waning Crescent: It's ever suspended

at the heave of the closing door.

I broke out but in the Future. Smog's erased the night.

All dreaming serves the day. Desire kept out of sight.

The New Moon is now the world, for above

the only spirit is Absence.

And it's to that same Absence,

who I now direct my prayer:

"Great Void above the city's glare!

How can I speak again when all I know

is to point towards the mirror

and stare?"

There's nothing. Then I'm answered.

A starlit chasm splits the ash soaked air: Space––

––I haven't seen it in so long: Dark blue ruled by a lunar pool,

the Full Moon! The original rune! Penned by the Gods––

––in solunar haze! Refracted in the moonlight is a lesson to power,

one only communicated in its ultimate phase:

"Go back to that place

where The Fool is waiting,

right at the center of the maze.

Go back to that place

you believe a stanza is missing,

and write a new one for yourself

in my name."