Moon Breathing Deeply Poem by Barry Van Asten

Under the moon's slant grin, we rushed,
Howling in the rain like Neanderthals;
Storming through an avenue of pink roses
That seemed to climb the skies outer reaches.
With electric heads in blooms - we stumbled,
Like two Frankenstein monsters fleeing
A mad professor's dynamo menace.

Beneath the rose archway, it struck suddenly
As our whispers became sledgehammer thuds.
And I studied the lips on your singing mouth,
While above, the stars, in silvery-timbred boredom,
Eased back into their snug soft pockets
And looked on...we gasped,
Under night's snoring cauldron, knowing
Something had walked away from us;
Something unreal without a word.

I was at the mercy of your tra-la-la,
As your chin doubled with excitement.
Is this all there is to what we are?
Are there no new horizons breaking? Won't
You tell me of love's pensive ways?
I want to dwell in the groves of it's pain.
Tonight, by the zodiac, all iron and zinc,
I want to feel love in the curves of your sleep.
Reveal by the wrappings, a world unseen
Where oceans are born and tides quickly turn.
Where a life-force stares like a great solar lion
Back upon this obscene creation - earth.

The heave of time's momentum swings,
Shoved around a sunlit room where it finds
A history lingering in your clothes.
With bedroom veins in slack suspension -
Circuits are probing the unforeseen.
About the room, things sit and listen,
Monitoring the awkward silences again.

Outside, the sun's all pain today:
The nemesis of external change.
Sat like Buddha - this is pain,
Ruled by symbols...My rejected torso
Seemed as old as the pyramids again.
We both collapsed on a cigarette
After totaling the wounds on our arms and legs,
As we paused to capture the necessity of now:
Must we destroy and re-build everything in our way?
Must we shape history to our own desires?

The hours passed, I watched them pass;
Pass strange into that dream idyll,
Where there is words in tears, afterall,
To leave me with the traces of your faith still.
I saw how we fell to the glance and gloom
Of another April's boomerang dance.
And it's terrible, I thought, this obsession in the heart,
Always looking for the place you've been coming from.

But perhaps the concrete dark sun of August
(That omen of ends and beginnings)
Will earth us in this great nothingness;
Or perhaps some inner star sign will show
Internal change is change too late, for us.