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Moon Almighty

[audio link]

An opal wafer is raised 
Over Lake Monona: The Body 
Of Christ, a colossal Tylenol™
Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani!
Into thine hands I commit my spirit

   Thanks be to early man, lifting
   Torches with one hand to
   Spit pigment at the other 
   Tagging claim to concave earth
   When fire danced with moon

Thanks be to the Moon

   Thanks be to Heironymus
   Bruegel the Elder, Shamans
   Everywhere, Yup’ik, Tlingit
   Haida, Kwakwaka’wakw
   Under various moons 

Thanks be to the Moon 

   Thanks be to soldiers
   Of thee, Great War, packed
   Stoney and stolid and straight
   In boxes behind a drum   
   Beneath the rotting moon

Thanks be to the Moon
  
   Thanks be to Sigmund, Jung
   Kafka, André-Breton-wandering-
   Mexico-City, Man Ray, Ernst, Dalí,
   Frida, Miró, Magritte, Klee    
   Footprints peppering the moon

Thanks be to the Moon

   Thanks be to those who
   Wept at Angel Island, scrawled
   Names in Dachau, Abu Ghraib
   Are lamenting at Guantánamo
   In cells without moons

Thanks be to the Moon
  
   Thanks be to Why-eth, Eros
   Broadband, the 99%, Blume
   Bones in the Sonora Desert
   Hopper and the dialectic
   Drawn between poles of moon

Thanks be to the Moon

   Thanks be to Tanguy dreams
   Castellón unconscious where Cornell
   Boxes Burroughs in mirrors with Apollinaire’s
   L’esprit nouveau et les poetes
   Bajo una luna surrealista

Moons, the bones of words
Words, sinew of sentence
Sentences, marrow of thought
Thoughts, arithmetic of art
Art, a crow, landing
Directly in your path

    Together:

I believe in the Moon Almighty
Maker of Mind and Motive
And in Poetry, Son of Experience
Conceived by the Holy Pen
Born of Virgin Ink
Suffered under Otto Pilate
Forgotten, dead and filed
The third day He rose again
Ascended into heaven
and sitteth on the right hand
of Art, the Father

I believe in the Blank Canvas
The Holy Palette of Hues
The Communion of Artists
The Forgiveness for realism
The Resurrection of Memory
And Image everlasting

AMEN

           
Gary M. Powell

 

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