Problems of Moon Language
The debate is unbearable.
Empire warps the soul for show.
The body, we know, is torn to shreds
or smoothed into orbit. Termites, too,
abandon hill to seize new ground.
The debate is unwatchable.
Our detritus is diamond dirt. Termites,
we eat our books alive
and in metamorphosis don’t end
in butterflies unless, as a mystic said,
butterflies dream of us
inside their sleep.
Our satellites are fertile,
robust and high,
for trees and monuments,
gazebos and stupas,
arks, sentinels,
and minarets.
*
The debate is unbearable.
Empire the soul for show.
The body, we know, is pulled into orbit.
Termites, too, abandon hill
to seize new ground.
The debate is unwatchable.
Our diamond dirt. Termites,
we eat our books alive
unless, as a mystic said,
arcs and minarets.
*
The debate’s intolerable.
The soul in orbit.
Termites also dream
of butterflies
and minarets.
* * * * *
Libra
Before a bear mauls me,
before I slam
into the ground from a height I had
no business reaching,
before a bullet
bleeds me apparitional,
and before drowning
after surviving the fire
of a plane I did not board
until it was in midflight,
first I was alone
then with loved ones
who disappeared unharmed.
It’s rare to witness oneirically another’s
death, beloved or not,
even if the roads are populated
with posts, and the dead,
when they reappear,
are always alive.
I’m not blind. I hear nothing
during my rapids, though they are
like a doughnut, speech-filled
with letters I decrypt
after I wake. Their dots
mark my mind
with the day’s senses
as poetry is to a dictionary.
Is there a gauge
for joy in the reel of sleep,
is there dancing before bed?
Through nightmare, I can’t
stay calm, can’t trust that
whatever ending may come
will not be my end: and if mine,
who am I to deflect it from my body,
untagged, temporary corpse,
paralyzed so that I
don’t harm myself
in the psychosis of wanting
to save myself or others
from neurotransmitters
depleting, replenishing
in contact zones, the noble
civil war of sleep.
Yes there is joy:
now and then
a chase frees me of gravity,
the hunt terminates,
and the air
turns viscid beneath my feet, a high
so physical that I’m not done
rising and gliding
like a ballerina
in my still waking:
it takes me
a minute to suspend my belief
in my superpower, my will
to stay alive
is autonomic.
After my will
to fall back asleep.