The Moon Has Always Been an Alien

The Moon Has Always Been an Alien

Alien

Once, this stable hosted  
tens of thoroughbreds.

But this ranch has a history 
of lost riders

and now, there is
nothing else to ride.

Set free by forgetfulness 
rather than truth,

I am comfortable 
with my beliefs of the unseen.

Under the night sky, 
scars become spider veins—

like an atom
blurred for naked eyes.

There is migration 
anytime the sun coils 

into its cotton shell 
or when the ground cracks, 

because it thirsts for rain. 

Stalactites hang 
down the roof of a cave 

where shadows 
eclipsed the hieroglyphs.

Before the storm, 
sharks fled their nurseries  

for the abyssopelagic zone, where 
the moon has always been an alien.

Light

—	with a line from Kahf or the Cave
As the sea rises, it absorbs lights 
from the sky in packets.

A spider tents a web bridge 
across the well of oyster shells.

Inside the mirror are reflections 
of cities on water.

The window glasses in this house 
are old as toothed edges of cowries 

on the sea floor. A fisherman returned 
after a storm. In the past, disciples  

of this blue water sat on the beach 
with lungs filled with hot air, 

& thirsty for their wounds to be healed. 
Omi o ni ota, omi ni ìwòsàn ohun gbogbo.

Though we name what we can neither inherit 
nor mourn, man has never been most of anything.

The eye was cave enough to be a museum
for beams of wandering blue lights, 

until they vanished before it rained.  
The storm blew octopuses to the beach.

If the water breaks through, walk
into the fog until you touch the water, 

A smoke from a burnfire
dilates the cave’s entrances, 

hungered with grief, a new moon 
was sighted in a jar of salt water.