New Poem

I have been teetotalling, but last night I had two gin and tonics and my body was glowing. I drove to Provincetown and the monument that Norman Mailer once climbed looked lunar. Like a rocket on the eve of orbit.

The water in the wharf was violet and there was white in the violet where the harborlights shone and the water was flowing through the lights. It was raw outside but there were people out in town and I drank whiskey and beer in the Old Colony until midnight. I saw a star: a local anchorman from the Boston news channel. But there was no moon, alas. I have been obsessed with her. She is in hiding for a few more days and yet I have been approaching her shores in my mind all the time. I am mapping her harbors and her bays.

I think it’s that the moon puts one in the state of Adam, everything there is open to being named.

I slept through the whole morning with bright dreams of women I’d never met before and woke up at noon alive and a poem was in me. I always feel a little mad when I write a poem. They come to me in moments of libration.

Libration is the wobble in the moon that lets us peak around her edges into the dark side, and see more than 50% of her land.

The dark side. On their recent voyage, Artemis II captured the first images of a lunar eclipse of the sun from the dark side of the moon.They floated in total darkness for an hour, except for the faint halo the sun gave the moon, and then the first bursts of light when the eclipse ended.

There are many things for Adam and Eve to do on the moon. Someone alive today will tell a lie on the moon. Someone born today will die upon the moon. The first people to have sex on the moon are alive on earth and have not yet met. What will they mean to each other? How will it feel? Will the change in gravity alter the very structure of the orgasm, of conception? How will the womb grow a child on the moon and what shape will they take? Do not let us grow beyond the womb: do not let us make of the womb an abandoned architecture where no child grows. A Roman ruin. No.

Let us have children.

So who will get drunk on the moon and kiss on the moon and put

A

fire on

the moon,

&

Sleep

upon

the moon

&

Seas

upon

the moon.

I have had

a dream upon the moon.

Darkness

on the moon, &

Sex in the darkness

of her noon.

A murder on the moon.

I have had a dream

that murdered the moon.

An

ocean on

the moon,

&

Mountains on

the moon,

&

Birth upon the moon.

I have had a dream

that curtained the moon.

A shadow on the moon

I saw too soon,

I have seen the sun

Die behind the moon.

When the sun dies

The mind dies too,

And from the darkest side

It dreams around the moon.

But when the rims of night

Take an inch of light,

One remembers light

And dreams awake so soon.

One sees the light

Of the silver inch of soul,

& one remembers light

Is our silver inch of soul.

One has their oldest dream

That put footsteps on their soul,

And has their day of sleep

That sails them through her poles,

And lays them down to sleep

With silver in their hold.

And lays them down deep

In the silver of the soul.