I’m Over the Moon
I don’t like what the moon is supposed to do. Confuse me, ovulate me, spoon-feed me longing. A kind of ancient date-rape drug. So I’ll howl at you, moon, I’m angry. I’ll take back the night. Using me to swoon at your questionable light, you had me chasing you, the world’s worst lover, over and over hoping for a mirror, a whisper, insight. But you disappear for nights on end with all my erotic mysteries and my entire unconscious mind. How long do I try to get water from a stone? It’s like having a bad boyfriend in a good band. Better off alone. I’m going to write hard and fast into you moon, face-fucking. Something you wouldn’t understand. You with no swampy sexual promise but what we glue onto you. That's not real. You have no begging cunt. No panties ripped off and the crotch sucked. No lacerating spasms sending electrical sparks through the toes. Stars have those. What do you have? You’re a tool, moon. Now, noon. There’s a hero. The obvious sun, no bulls hit, the enemy of poets and lovers, sleepers and creatures. But my lovers have never been able to read my mind. I’ve had to learn to be direct. It’s hard to learn that, hard to do. The sun is worth ten of you. You don't hold a candle to that complexity, that solid craze. Like an animal carcass on the road at night, picked at by crows, haunting walkers and drivers. Your face regularly sliced up by the moving frames of car windows. Your light is drawn, quartered, your dreams are stolen. You change shape and turn away, letting night solve all night’s problems alone.
From Human Dark with Sugar by Brenda Shaughnessy. Published by Copper Canyon Press, 2008. Copyright © Brenda Shaughnessy. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press. All rights reserved.