Moon Medicine

"Moon Medicine"

Moon,

I’m a lonely coyote
with a cactus-needle cry
dragging my body across
the cold-blooded corpse of night.

I was born with a vagabond heart
and never had a back yard,
so I buried hope under my skin
with the rest of my bones.

Like you, my heart is a sun-scorched mirror
a distant stone clothed in craters and frozen seas
a bowl of wavering emotions
a home for fettered footprints and memories.

In my ribcage, there is a death-sick vulture
pecking! picking! at the carcass of my love.
I lie to myself, and convince my ears
that the sound is the voice
of my deadened heartbeat.

And I’ve choked-up
every time a beloved left me,
so my stomach is a desert
of discarded goodbyes.

But tonight,
I sit in the belly of a canyon hell/low 
though you are my heavenly hi(gh).
My blazing eyes lift off,
and explore your glow with lust-laden sight.
The silence softens its scream,
and my hushed thoughts
grow wilder than naked sunlight.

Just step out of the sky and kiss me.
Kiss me to magnetize my howling blood.
Carry me from this dead cliff of loneliness
and fill my empty nights.
Claim my waning pain.
Scratch my waxing appetite.
Consume me like a flock of fleas
and free the love leashed in the dungeon of my heart.
Damn the ever-foaming mouth of morning
and the knifing teeth of its rabid sun!

Oh magnificent and ripening satellite!
You swallow the hours with your brilliancy.
Open your arms like swinging doors
and wrap my body like a blanket of wind
Ensure my drifting heart is anchored
in the timeless waters of your soul:

You are
an ocean of twilight kisses,
a bay of endless verse,
a river of healing laughter
carving through the canyons of my despair.

-r.gibsun