The Man in the Moon Isn't Human

February 24, 2005

Michael respectfully advises me nobody's ever going to have the stamina to post comments if I keep up these four thousand word posts. Imply, imply, he entreats me. Save your ramblings for retorts!

Ergo, I submit the following, in honor of last night's glorious moon.

The man in the moon isn't human
he must be some thing from the stars
the man in the moon isn't human
if he is, he his horribly scarred
his eyes aren't oval or round
their shape seems to bleed
across tranquil seas
as if the moon cried tears of fire

I was driving the high road last evening
the moon traced strange curves through the trees
I don't know the way to the shadows, I told him
though I think I might know the way back
I watched him go instead of the road
at last I let him lead

The man in the moon isn't smiling
in fact i think that he cries
he has watched us as long as I've known him
looking back is like trying to see from the mirror me's eyes
if the things that he sees so disturb him
why doesn't he look somewhere else?

Once the man was a woman who nobody touched
and now he is
what?
a spy for the islands of saturn?
an exile, like napoleon?
or is he a lover of ours that we shun?

The man in the moon is going away
once he was bigger, or seemed so
now he shrinks more every day
I think I can see it happening
though the spacemen tell me I don't

The man in the moon isn't human
soon the dead will be buried in his skin
and people will think, but not say
that the man in the moon is a graveyard
they'll look into his tranquil eyes
and cry

The man in the moon isn't human
in his heart there is iron and basalt
one day perhaps
when our own hearts are gone
we'll fly up and dig them out.

Posted by mjd at 11:40 AM