Moon Eyes

by Jay Paul

“My eyes have turned to four moons,

two in the front of my face

and two in the back of my bald head.

I don’t see from them. They glow white,

I am told by my partner. I no longer see.

I just glow white orbs and listen,

hearing the gurgling of a tea kettle and

the scraping of frost off a wind shield

in the parking lot. I cannot see.

But I can hear. I can hear the morning news

report of a killing by the police. I extrapolate

to the crunching of bone, the cries

of those brutalized for centuries.

Bones are still crunched, down this very block.

Moon eyes glow. I can hear the toilet

clicking in the bathroom, clicking away.

When will the landlord fix it?

I can hear the toast pop up

and think through my moon eyes of how

politics ends up so often in the same

place, putting down violently those who oppose.

Is there another way? I smell the tea—

pungent, from the earth half a globe away.

My moons glow and I sense the whole earth

in my body, knowing it all won’t come

down the way I supposed. I only guess.

We all only guess. And our moons glow.

There is no weighing the best way forward.

I stumble down the hall with glowing

blind moons to use the ticking toilet.

Perhaps there is no answer. Perhaps humans

are as tied to pattern as the phases

of the moon. Perhaps we are inevitable.

Perhaps we all have moons for eyes

and don’t know it, don’t know we see

only the specific phase we are in and not

the particulars, the thing, as we blindly

careen from one unnecessary death to

the next. What continent has not known

human cruelty? Perhaps the coldest one.

The scrambled eggs at the end of my fork

find my mouth. I eat and eat some more.

Oh, the moons will fade, slowly, and I will

see again. When it comes back, how to envision?”