I sit here,
wearing this moonlight like a red tunic.
I sit beside you,
behind a wooden table made for picnics and
we discuss.
We discuss until our ears are numb,
our tongues are bleeding, until
the melted prints we have associated with
words have lost connection.

I forget the scape of clouds
earlier. They did not even look real
and I thought,
"these clouds look straight from a Renaissance
painting"
and I thought about you:
not like clouds but
you are closer maybe
to the iridescent twitch that was in Michelangelo's guts.

In my tunic I sweated over
the pained irking of the obvious;
indoctrination of a riotous crowd
that screamed in our ears

I fantasized about how it
could fit in my hand all along

Yet
this tired moonlight
like fishing nets,
answers our questions;
all of them, if we listen
hard enough

And it lifts these limping legs
as they revel through vendors
in the stink of that city sun,
barely dragging
behind
whispering mouths and minds
that claw at the door,
mad dogs:
weakened with rage/
touched hard by the
blur of no hope

Where are the drivers
in these buses filling
with the curious tourists
of our questions?
dropping them off in some border town
that holds the ribbon tight
between two places we
could not
stand
to look at ever again,
unless in moonlight?