Spring cleaning & I found these poems I started during Shirley Brewer's moon poetry workshop at the January 2013 MWA Baltimore Chapter meeting:
Rave
The music is so loud
it feels like it’s coming
from within, each bass
beat expelled
with my breath. I am
surrounded by neon soldiers
spinning, popping, rocking
nodding. They dance in dreams
fueled by ecstasy & immortality.
I am mesmerized
by the movements
of these modern
day whirling
dervishes, oblivious
to eyes
like mine.
Even the yo-yos
being spun, glowing
on fluorescent strings,
dozens of tiny moons
in awkward orbits,
beguile me.
days when I stayed
close, days when your extended
arms could not be wrapped
around me?
Do you recall those times
so long ago when you could climb
a mountain, and if your heart
was big enough, you could leap
from the peak & I could catch
you in my fullness?
Of course not. We were
so much closer then, back when
you worshiped me, revered me,
coveted my cheese. I loved you
then. But now? Now you have
grown up, grown old, grown
bitter & cynical.
I have become nothing
but cold rock to you.
Painting the Moon
I cried the night I realized
Gustav Klimt had painted
the moon. Before then
it was nothing more
than a ball
of rock, battered & broken,
sterile & lifeless.
And then came Yem,
a muse sent by the moon
itself—sent to show me
that its vitality lied
not in the presence of life
but in the weight
of our souls.
So, for Yem,
I went to art school.
I learned to see the life
in everything—nothing
existed in a vacuum
when I could make it all
breathe.
Like a willo’wisp
returning to woods
Yem winked out
before I could catch
her. Rumors were
she had to go
home, home
to money claiming
playtime was over.
So I mourned
for her. I climbed
to the rooftop and screamed
at the moon until I was raw.
I saw
it then, the face
was Judith’s;
tonight, she held
my severed head,
Holofernes’ rejected.
I cried.
I cried for Yem.
I cried for myself.
I cried most now knowing
everything had life,
everything
but me.
