Raymond Luczak
AND INTO THE MANY SHROUDS OF NIGHT
I go
when the light glaring into my eyes
slashes my soul
full of melancholic tunes,
and so in despair
I must go.
I know
how to pretend and disguise
that empty hole
in my battered chest festooned
with flowers. Threadbare,
I must flow
to show
that all is fine with their constant lies.
I shall console
myself, as I sleep each moon,
with dreams bright as air.
I’m aglow.
* * *
MOONCHILD
The moon is a spoon flipping in the air,
its handle flaying sugar cubes of stars
in nightly wakes. Venus dances with Mars,
her gaseous beauty beyond compare
against his rust skin of pockmarked craters.
Borne of their love, the moon’s allowed to roam
in funhouse spins, its giggles going home
lightyears away. But there are no laters,
not if the child never learns the word "no"
while turning cold to the comets that sing.
Not enough love is the ultimate sting.
The bitter moon waxes and wanes its glow
as it watches the waltz between these two
struggle revolutions in orbits true.
* * *
NOVEMBER ROOTS
The tree that once towered above
my landlord’s garage has been chopped down,
gone, bedded
with dead leaves raked
over to hide the earth’s pockmark.
The stump is twisted to the side.
These fingers, once proud, weaken.
They let go handfuls of soil,
losing spine of trunk at last
in the vast pockets of earth.
There’s nothing left to forgive.
It is my turn now to age.
Raymond Luczak is the author and editor of twenty-two books. Title include Flannelwood,
The Kinda Fella I Am:
Stories and QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology. His Deaf gay novel Men with Their Hands won
first place in the Project: Queer Lit Contest. His work has been nominated ten times for the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Minneapolis,
Minnesota and can be found online at raymondluczak.com .
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