Punch the Moon
A Medley
1
Sappho watched me set behind the Pleiades,
Li Bai raised his cup and drank to my reflection,
Shakespeare said I made men mad with my disease,
Shelley asked if I was pale from climbing heaven's direction.
2
Keats compared me to a bright star, constant, cold,
Yeats reached for my silver apples, never bitten,
Neruda swore the night was starry but his love had gone — retold
a thousand times by every fool love-smitten.
3
Moon River, they crooned — the light that guides the night,
wider than a mile, the dream you'd cross someday.
Sinatra swore he'd fly me, fill the world with light,
Madonna grooved beneath me — and I let them have their say.
But that was when you worshipped from a distance, called to mother.
Now you arrive as tourists, eager to leave your trash like any other.
4
Ninety-six bags of piss. A golf ball's arc.
Crashed rovers, billionaires who spend their days
launching toys to orbit, bored of Earth, bored of the dark,
planting flags in dust, calling it a phrase.
5
Still I pull your tides. Still I turn my face.
Four billion years of silence, and I've heard it all before —
your anthems and your ashes, your flags staked to claim the place,
your small steps and your giant leaps that always wanted more.
6
Go ahead. Fly me to wherever Sinatra swore.
I'll still be here when your rockets rust, when your love songs fade to lore.