A God Stain Poem by T.R. James Bray

Vegetation under a red moon
Lays under a rusted hue.
Not the moon's chosen value or tint, but it will take what it can get.
As we all do,
to feel nourished.
Sunsets never serve a banquet
They are the brash leftovers of what brilliance the day held.
In twilight not much sustenance comes.
For centuries it was the witches, sorcerers and the shaman
that would conjure the meaning and use the red moon to unexplained results
trying to harness its properties.
Now we have scientists, who dissect ever physical aspect associated to this change in celestial colouring.
These thinkers bury all wonder under piles of papers no one will ever read.
My eyes are tired, from looking too long
at research journals in dim light.
The new agers also use this 'orb of night'
To describe changes in emotion and feeling.
We all are touched by the red moon's influence
Drowned in it.
As limited and perverted as it's effect may be.
We still feel it.
Revealing the mutated changes it conducts
on our otherwise normal maturation.
Organic anomaly,
deviant at its core.
How does a silver moon become red?
How does the brilliance fade?
What pulls that cover over and transforms its purpose?
It's scope and function?
Must be a God stain. Blood heaved from earth
Left over from some ancient sacrifice. Running down the face.
It was you who tossed up the blood, surrendering
the glimmer in your eyes
for the sake of something else that never appeared.
Your offering vanishing under a swell of blame,
self-pity and intoxicants.
Your face now glows red just as the moon, covered in your own sacrificial blood.
And the medicine men, magicians, experts and analysts
have gone home to sleep.
Dreaming of cloudy days and moonless nights.