Let your thoughts be moonbrittle
—let them be moonboiled,
moonmaddened. Let the waxy weave
of moonsilk sieve away your better instincts.

Be what you would be alone,
raised in darkness and in moonglow.

Inhale the dark powder of moondust,
let your veins purple
with moonburn.

Imagine simple violence,
the way a moonfall
crashes to the horizon.

Know the moonlove, that you are loved
like flame loves kindling. She is impossible
without you.

We look up, mooneyed and moonbound,
fix her silver face with our needling attention.

We are dreaming her to life.

You are moonbloodied; moonblooded—
prophet, lover, beaten child
of a moon we all invented.

About the Author

“This is not a pipe, and the moon isn’t the moon–I love humanity and the way we stitch together patchworks of meaning and mystery, until the idea gets bigger than we are.”

Elliott M. Freeman is the descendant of pirates and layabouts; as a writer and teacher, he spends his days saving the world (one semicolon at a time). His work has previously appeared in journals including Prick of the Spindle, Blue Monday Review, and Product.

About the illustrator