Moon

The Proprietor of Dreams

I ride with my horse unsaddled
Onto the field of battle, wondering
Just who is the proprietor of my dreams
Is it the moon, corrupted by trees
Whose black branches reach up and up

To caress it. The usurper of a sun
That once witnessed two towers fall
An ineffectual element. In decline.
Each rock is eroded by its sister: the sea
These are the songs all children sing

As newly dead ghosts depart
To join the ancestors. 'One day
We'll be back,' they say, moving away
I drift with the river instead
Grey waves, grey waves, they greet us

And we pour blue blood
Over the red of some pauper
I tried to die a thousand times
But I was always dragged back
To the stench of that trench

The European Night and the American Poetess

The European night is unfamiliar to this American poetess
In a way that she cannot define. The stars are brighter somehow
No matter, it is indeed divine. A lamp burns at her window
It is the star that beckons us home. It seems to smile. At what?
It is displaced by the moon
And our yesterdays call once more

And the moon gloats
At the stars she outshines
Like a brilliant big sister
Are the trees overwhelmed too?

Their fingers reach up, up, up to touch
Her as she dangles there for all to see
What a narcissistic show-off she must be
That full, all-effacing (rather fat, actually) moon

'I think I'm on the side of the Angels'
'No you're not. You're on the side of the cool kids. Watch Mean Girls if you don't get the reference.'