An idea of fantastic moonlight
on the water's wavering surface,
we are concentric in our desires
for the rest of the meal,
it's only during full moons
when the dogs feel like singing
and the trains and trolleys,
running along parallel tracks,
to screech and whistle and yowl
into the black slants of downtown
in the iron grey sheen of lunar gleaning
that makes the arid
and thirsty with desire as all the cars
rattle in line and the steel wheels
grind around the bends of the tracks that
move between buildings of cracked brick
and scarred, grey cement,
cutting through old neighborhoods
where trains are go to and come from
places distant as the face of the moon
rippling and quivering in snaking white lines
from the horizon, over the water,
to the beach and the mirrored hardness
of the sand,
I want to you scratch my back
and rub my neck,
you are saying, turning around in your seat,
your computer screen on a web page decorated with
floral print and drawings of naked men,
there is so much left to write about before deadline,
there's a mountain of data that needs indexing and
some other line of scrutiny, you place a finger
over my lips, you say Listen and there are barking dogs,
car horns and train whistles sounding
in cryptic orchestrations, shrill,
and thirsty among the ashen hues
the full moon brings us,
it's time to let data just pile up
so we can pile on each other
and books fall to the floor
as they would in perfect love stories,
The camera pulls away and floats to the window
to settle on an image of the full moon,
the full moon would be smiling, yes
but no, not that, clouds drift over the orb
and the world loses some of
the grey glow,
yet the sound don't change,
whether trains, dogs, cars stalled on an over pass,
both of us stuck on each other,
noises stuck on the black tarp of evening.
You turn your head,
you cough and recover,
hand at your throat,
the mike buzzes but not before,
You shuffle your poems
and read yet again,
you go on in a room
where everyone has a first line,
I would read about your eyes,
Wide as they are as saucers,
cups that are deep as pans of bread
that come from the oven
and into my heart,
and that's a start, I think,
You fold your hands
on the podium as you read;
you've got this memorized,
yet it all seems extemporized
from the bottom of your heart
which hasn't a bottom at all,
Now some one else reads,
a guy with tattoo of his tongue
across his left cheek, he screeches
to hip- hop clicks of a clock,
but he's young and
not far from done as long as
His homies throw their signs
with fingers that cross a language
of quieting the flutters of the untested heart,
I will read you later, on the phone,
with every court and hand gesture,
you wave goodnight, I know the line,
You'll see me in the funny papers.
