Kit Kelen #261 - poem for the mid-autumn festival

261

poem for the mid-autumn festival

thinking of Li Bai

yes you moon

I am addressing you

again!

o lifeless one

dust bucket

nothing-disc

pocked-and-pimply

mildew ear

mouldy heaven stain

yes you

sky snail

crawler

hole-in-the-up-above

flung bone

of the forgotten collision

all this praise of ages

heaped for you

why?

I wish I could explain this obsession

I suppose there is the hide-n-seek thing

now-you-see-me

we only imagine where you go

always emerging, vanishing

from clouds or out of the blue

nevertheless your bright is borrowed

any colour's atmosphere we add

what draws us to this tide of light?

who is it puts the rabbit up there?

surely you're more tortoise?

tonight

you're round as the cake

almost as inedible

you're like a pregnancy come to term

still birth

and try again

nothing daunted

go around again

your skin

is a record of aimless violence

(not that I wish to blame the victim)

though the passivity wears me down

I suppose that's the thing with your apostrophe

people want contraction or possession

and what do they get?

the speechless object hung

you're the piñata that won't shake out

I have seen the pictures

of the dark side

and it's no more pretty a sight

but that's where the cart's parked I suppose?

eventually one cottons on

this is a one-sided conversation

that old man

he played one

he played knick-knack...

Bahloo – moon man

he keeps three deadly snakes for his pets

alright I'll keep drinking

till there are three of us

who knows, there could be more

let me arrange the cups

for

Semele

for Chang E

for Ta'lab

for Tecciztecatl

cast of thousands it turns out

and somebody has to have brewed the stuff

so why not drink to him/her/whomever

but why?

no one hoists a beaker to the stars

the sun does often raise a thirst

we never toast Old King Sol

but you, simple satellite

you drive us wolf-mad

you drag blood tides

we sing by your silvery

we harvest your shine on

you might have been the only moon ever

if we had never looked beyond

now we know you're dime a zillion

any old big rock has one of you

but you're our one-and-only

moon-face

shall we moon you?

(first recorded 66 CE)

in Land-of-the-Long-White

it's whakapohane

this is culture, kids

our moon, nobody else's

this is the reason, is it not

skull companion?

in all the vast of space and time

you show us the dust in the darkness

remind us how near death always is

you've always been

you'll always be our mirror

whether we're looking or not

on nights like this when we peer in