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I love this bizarre little poem, which the creative writing teachers never tire of telling there students was published in the mighty Poetry magazine. I just found out that its author, Jim Simmerman, died recently at the age of 54, so I thought I should put it up here, posthaste.
"Moon Go Away, I Don’t Love You No More"
Morning comes on like a wink in the dark. It's me it's winking at. Mock light lolls in the boughs of the pines. Dead air numbs my hands. A bluejay jabbers like nobody’s business. Woodsmoke comes spelunking my nostrils and tastes like burned toast where it rests on my tongue. Morning tastes the way a rock felt kissing me on the eye: a kiss thrown by Randy Shellhouse on the Jacksonville, Arkansas Little League field because we were that bored in 1965. We weren't that bored in 1965. Dogs ran amuck in the yards of the poor, and music spilled out of every window though none of us could dance. None of us could do the Frug, the Dirty Dog Because we were small and wore small hats. Moon go away, I don't love you no more was the only song we knew by heart. The dull crayons of sex and meanness scribbled all over our thoughts. We were about as happy as headstones. We fell through the sidewalk and changed color at night. Little Darry was there to scuff through it all, so that today, tomorrow, the day after that he will walk backward among the orphaned trees and toy rocks that lead him nowhere I could ever track, till he's so far away, so lost I'll have to forget him to know where he's gone. la grave poullet de soir est toujours avec moi— even as the sky opens for business, even as shadows kick off their shoes, even as this torrent of clean morning light comes flooding down and over it all.
—Jim Simmerman
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