I cannot describe the moon.
Tonight, brilliant as though

banished, white as my longing,
slow in its swoon, like a psalm,

dear as death and near to it.
How much longer must I wait?

These darkened spheres of sorrow
and reticence suffering

eclipse. To meet you, again,
your lips, but this time in that

dream, another place prescribed.
How shall I describe this fire

within and the electric
shards of a memory grown

wild, a child lost, communing
with an inflammable past,

and the wind which understands
all things? Present, or gone and

forgotten, knowing of soon.
I cannot describe the moon.

Tonight, held hardly harvest,
slightly scalloped like my heart,

still, full of premonition
and forlorn, part quixotic

like a query portending
pain. Sworn domination of the

darkness and the darker rain.
This was of the greater plan

and thus naturally bound.
Your beauty like a violent

passage, this vision quickly
vaporized, now a shadow

of something forever lost.
That kiss, which was the kiss of

death, confounding, and fatal
unto itself. I have thought

of you, stupidly, these times,
endless with weight, and my words

truncated like the constant
thought that I am here, real, and

that I matter, incognate
as I may be in my state.

Still, this quiet and torrid
night, this irreparable

sentiment shown, circumscribed
without. How shall I describe

arrays like constellations
of calamity contained.

A life time of nostalgia
in one furtive glance withdrawn,

the stars melting in torrents
like tears and the wind which will

not understand, rearing its
bent face in trepidation.

How shall I describe? Hallowed
in its spectral orb. And the

wind which understands all things.
Like these leaves, lyrics hiding

themselves under names assumed.
I cannot describe the moon.

Tonight, sensual like my
song, fearless as fate, and prone

to tragedy. Self licensed
for sighing, surreptitious

sometimes, repeating cycles
between affliction and sleep.

What cost to mold this moment?
Retract, knowing fully well

I shall be punished for this
act of treason against man,

some defiant funambule
tracing light. And yet if it

were to rain just now I would
collect the drops in a jar

like fireflies in mid-summer
in the lightness of late June.

I cannot describe the moon
with the air emitting sounds

of drunken accordions.
This convergence of matter.

The beading glass, the tired
cigarette, the watered down

whisky and the tarnished spoons.
How shall I describe? Desire,

and these lips, ripened like prunes.
I cannot describe the moon.

Tonight, sublime syndicate
of an awaking, whispers

of a dawn ephemeral
caching themselves in shadows

almost patient like the East.
This banality pressing

a deadly aneurysm.
Forgive me. Please forgive me

How shall I describe? This thing,
I have known you, your beauty

from the oldest dream I’ve held,
and now after all these years,

again for the duration,
my present longing for you,

alone in my hotel room,
an uncharted continent.

I shall not describe the moon
in a country where longing

no longer means anything,
in such strict absence of bliss.

And the wind which understands
everything, excepting this.

 

–from Exoration