Terminal New Moon Poem by Norman F. Santos

From this bloating hoary disk
I shall bicker to envisage
A new moon guffawing
In its emollient ashen fringe
To exhume myself from oppression
Of self-induced agonizing subterfuge
Fondly nibbling with the luminaries
On the girdle of veracity
Inch by inch, I’m drawing closer
To the lunatic spell of the old moon
Marred by its penumbra
I sliced myself to grate the wounds
To open and deluge with pain
For pain is for the living
Condensing these oxymoronic ideals
I shall efface the man inside
And bargain for a travesty in a chortle;
A superficial veneer: a new moon.
And when the wolves howl tonight,
In their carnal carousals
And the owls hoot along,
From their voyeuristic revelries
I will sing along like a vulture
For them to find and muse me
As I paint the opiate panorama
With a perilous terminal death
Inside a dire scuffling
Against my archenemy;
The undertow of wisdom,
The tirade of freedom:
Bigoted veracity,
Dangling on a new moon.