An Idea of Fantastic Moonlight

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.