The always competing two horizons delay themselves in a pause
before night’s fall, and the sun’s lazy eye that had reached the edge
eyes the moon’s beguiling eye at this decline between evening and
night, heralding the zen of things. Deep into the evening, the moon
rests at the dermal skins of the eastern horizon; departed daylight is
the thief to this moon, racing away unseen on the other horizon with
the intent to snatch this moon away. Yellow prickles of blood seeps
from the moon’s eye as the moon’s broken skins, as a brief warning
of what moves the Owl’s hunger. The moon is in motion, sometimes
motionless, sometimes moored into an emotionless sky, sometimes
lingering, sometimes escaping in night’s darkened bedrooms, and
sometimes forgetting its dark secrets. Sometimes the moon is bright
in the skies but forms no image on your mind. And the Blackbird’s
tail is fanned like a dark flame burning a hole through the canvassed
sky as the blackbird’s song is lost in a net of stars at the bottom of
the sky’s oceans. Sometimes the moon is like the lingering noises of
witches on the prowl in shadowy nights of its faint light. One discord
note sung by the Owl breaks the Blackbird’s song. The Owl’s hooting
hungry eyes seeing through the shadows of a city gone to sleep; of
vendors, of walls of walking humans, of ventricles of roads, of humus,
of vehicles vanishing off. Sometimes the moon is a hunchback to the
clouds, too heavy to be imprisoned, even when its presence continues
to be threatened by the passing clouds. Sometimes the moon’s pale
complexion peeps through arthritic branches, a moon stripped of its
legs, slowly moving. Sometimes the language of this moon tingles my
skins into damned places I didn’t know of, as my ears prick to the last
song of the blackbird learning to quickly call the night out, like those
creatures that reveals on your mind unannounced. And sometimes the
moon is a soft sponge to the weight of the darkness we uncarry every
day.

Read more thought-provoking poems in New Contrast 199.
Artwork by Imile Wepener – Ocean Man.