THE MOON HIDDEN BY CLOUDS

[A small old-fashioned modernist sequence written during May to September 1976.]

He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud

in the imagination of their hearts.--Luke 1:51

The moments blend together

Surely we were children together

The essence of all my scenes

Sleeps in another skin

I am delighted to think

To think of what I want to know

To know of what I want to think

To think I am delighted

I talk to my friend

The audience

Ah witness my creation

We'll smash the marble of the night sky

We'll stipple more stars and sculpt

A dawn of grottos and still roses

We'll absorb the color from the faces of virgins

Yes boys...yes...with our horns in the wind

The phases of night and day join arms

Over the buildings

The heat of their embraces is the color of this twilight

We notice the similarity to the neon

We won't even be friends 'til the drinks are paid for

The violet sky tingles in the web of the window

It pulses with every breath

The dark moves around your transfixed face

Mad eyes in the candlelight

A pipe smokes beneath a trellis if stars

The ashes huddle in the bowl

Prepare the scene before the hour strikes

Every crime is the perversion of a need

Every ape stalks his family tree

But will history show Freud brought

More of them back alive than Jesus?

Both of them attended by vice

Hanging like fruit

Outside a cage

I'm giving you plenty of chances

I know I'm generous

I know I'm a fool

We are the deaths of each other

What an egotist you'd have to be

TYo be poet or powermonger

And not realize you are led to your maker

By the opinions you despise

You darling live in this world totally

It is here nothing opens by itself

Thus I didn't know your love

This heartbreak was mine

I'm neither vain nor psychic

I remember the mushroom warnings

Too much was there

I saw a tool lying in the grass

It was almost Mexican in concept

Its form fit a groove in the scene

I turned it to an ocean into which stars were falling

Why are you such a bitch?

I stood outside your window all night

If you saw you widened the curtains for nothing

You're never more naked than when you're trying to be friendly

Love passed right through without touching me

It's senseless to pine away for an intensity unreceived

I was too busy destroying myself

I wanted us to be so tight people would

Feel good just seeing us together

I waited for your denial

Fast hands traded up the rope of nerves

You say you're looking for work in New York

You say you know what you're doing

Don't go there if you don't

I would be there if not for you

Don't think you did me any favors

I do not like it here

You were my last hope

I knew for a fact you resented it

You took me to task

Long past my due

You brought me to tears

In an echoed room

And left

Leaving the door open

My love for you is dying

I'm realizing my greatest ambition

To be a cripple

Who neither sees nor hears nor feels

Still as stone

With rage becoming

A life in the mind

Learn to play an instrument

It's the only way you'll get laid

After all people put out cigarettes in sculptures

The steeple chimes a sentimental Irish drinking song

The night glows with mist warm as blood

Drunk in the window I stare down at the congregation

I don't remember how we connect

The world lies under an assault of sun

Flowers are torn out of their seeds

Leopards feed on chicks in the nest

Dreamers get screwed and how

The solution was hard come by

The criticism pointed and stuck

But he felt ready for the honors

His mind drops like an egg

It was an open window to the courtyard

One could almost tighten in the day-long shadow

Children's playful screams echo

Like the head being stuck

I don't think I'll ever be through with my misery

Too many know me by its name

Too many don't like to be wrong

I'm afraid I've been dreaming again

You said you loved me after all

Your tongue penetrated and I went off in a daze

Out of my mind and finally into my arms

Weaned on a paradise of guilt

We developed

We grew nails and sharpened them to improve draw

Perhaps one day we will change the rituals

In the name of love we've already destroyed the world

One night I spilled my guts for mercy

The excuses were in vain

As were the dissimilar bitternesses

Never tell love of love's secrets

The next morning the moon set

With nothing between us

I don't know where you are

I sometimes wonder if fate is ever more precise

Than when it joins us in our different identities

The next time we meet it won't matter

We will have forgotten enough

Of our sense of place

To be more alone than strangers

And so it came to be void

We sat in bars 300 miles apart

It's no wonder we noticed what others were wearing

It's no wonder we listened to the music

Bitterness comes to flower

While we tool with the spade

We are defined by pain

And remember every detail

As with the memory surging up full

Children send up a cry

The wind takes it in exchange

As the tree claims another kite

I grew away from our time with anxiety

Fear and mistrust were the clock's hands and numbers

Finally I counted the crosses

Tearing a leaf off the calendar

Dull and warm in comfortless Autumn

Was a man distracted by remembrance

Was the moon hidden by clouds

I believe I've lost this thread

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Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.