then
your pale frame
eclipsed my sight,
you, the moon,
caught me staring
too long and i blinked
your face burnt black
into the backs of my eyelids,
there were nights
i would rub my eyes
and count the spots
you’d left like stars
(one two three four
five six seven eight)

then
i thought the numbers
in my head were all
the reasons we were wrong
i started sleeping
with my eyes open
if i shut them i’d see
holes and think of your craters
and how the men who tread
your surface don’t clean
their boots well enough
don’t think to ask you
how you like it before
they plant their flags,
but they offered you
the world, and all i had
to offer were the spots
in the backs of my eyelids
(one two three four)

then
rockets counted down
the seconds until they could
meet you and i
counted you out,
contented myself by
staring at the sun,
blinked and i
saw spots
(one two three)

i am no man,
would not simply
stake a claim so bold.
in hindsight,
you, the moon,
had already claimed me,
wrapped your evening flag
over my eyes
and made me yours,
i just never
noticed the fabric,
couldn’t see past
the spots in my eyes.

now i only see you in hindsight.

Do you pretend that pain does not exist,
That my presence is irrelevant?
Maybe it is not pretend for you.

I'm here looking up at your shadow as
You walk over me and walk alone
In San Diego. The city of my youth my home
Away from home.

You are, that city, my heart away from my heart.
Beating and ebbing as the waves on the sand,
The arteries ache and stretch with the breath of my distaste,

I feel something with you gone.

And with you here. But that's not now because you're there,
Healing and skating and smoking with strangers
And taking pictures to remember being 19
in the tunnels
like the veins heading away from me.

19 lines to describe what eye feel when you ignore
Something you said was unique.

******* Anne. I ache.

"The pity of war, the pity war distills". - Wilfred Owen"

Just as a feral war begs for armistice,
    a season of peace engenders
a violence vacuum that begs to be filled
    as surely as a hollow begs for a pond.

It seems a cosmic battle rages
      between the oversouls of people
who would chisel a sculpture to grace
     and those who would hack off its arms.

History’s fools fire up their bully horns
     shouting proud oratory to ignorance -
and lemmings goose-step to the precipice -
      doomed to plunge into a sea of misery.  

Then there is quiet - guilty and reflective.
     How could we let this happen
with so much gain and loss in the balance?

and the sculptors of civilization
      find fresh marble to once again
carve reason, beauty, purpose
      from the acrid ashes of pride.
    
But the oversoul of hate will brood and re-fester
     as long as it's thought noble to **** for a cause.

© 2016 by Robert Charles Howard

Let there be music to fill my ears
with the voices & melodies I cannot make
Let there be music to fill my soul
with the crescendos & chords I cannot replicate

Let there be stars to fill my eyes
with the wonder & beauty I cannot be
Let there be stars to fill the night
with the majesty & radiance from which I cannot flee

Let there be music to fill my ears
Let there be stars to fill my eyes
So I may be understood as I shed tears
So I am not alone when I cry