The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You, poem 5

It would be a lie if I said everybody didn’t have it up
we was all breathing like we been pumping water all day long
when she comes when she come Charlie B. said
someone could a cut a onion and not one eye would have been batted
her eyes were closed now
and her arm looked like it was trying to find something lost somewhere
it was like she was blind and feeling around for something
it was a matter of life or death
Charlie B. screamed loud as a man got stabbed
she opened her eyes and her mouth at the same time like she was going under water
and she knew it and she aimed to get one last breath
before she drowned
that is when the figure appeared on the screen
the figure I had been seeing all along why they hadn’t the black spectre
Dracula appeared in his cape
just as the gypsy was drowning
it was like having someone meet you at the time of death
it was unexpected
for Jimmy and Charlie and the old man too were frightened
perhaps it was the unusual timing something I would call a rebus
that made all four of them tremble in their pleasure
I saw the girl bring both hands to her eyes I saw the mute scream
I was use to reading lips by then
the one hand already glistening in the moonlight as the tears
were forming and seeping through her fingers like blood
my three companions had their heads in their hands too
if all I saw was the ball and chain of guilt then I was free
for I did not feel it at all I only felt like I’d swum a long way
it was midnight
or after I knew by the stars and the moon and the animals and fish and insects
they forgot about the gypsy
the gypsy couldn’t forget about us because she never saw us but she might
as well have
Tang said ain’t that the doublecrossingest thing for a gal to do by herself
like that the night foe Easter. . .

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