Robert Verdon, #186, ambient moon

putting a shoulder to the roofless moon

in a thorny desert, unfazed by cackles of silence,

craters on this dark side which is bright as the

querulous creak of an unknown bird

flying by hopping, or anti-gravity,

in the morning on the meridian on the moon,

mild weather as a funnel through time,

atmosphere beaten thin as a wafer of gold leaf,

pushing the moon uphill in my dream like Sisyphus,

thorns of moon-rock jagged as music,

here is a bottomless well of green cheese,

ventriloquist’s dummies come here to die

with their orange flames of hair and bakelite jaws,

like something out of Kipling,

the horizon is sewn up like lips,

the ambience is that of a snug watering-hole up West,

dry as savoiardi, a jazz trio toned down low,

all night long.