Consequences

Consequences of the Total Lunar Eclipse

The Global
The Cosmic
The Public
The Private


One

The world and its inhabitants were forever changed. In random and inexplicable ways. Deodorant sales, for example, fell nearly to zero, and all women over six feet one took to humming Broadway tunes during foreplay. Misspellings on movie marquees were not uncommon.


Two

17,482 lunar eclipse poems were composed within 48 hours. Three contained an original metaphor. This is not one of those.


Three

Five new words -- fedic, cloit, vapulenna, ush, and thubble -- each referring to a previously unimagined feat of sexuality, were simultaneously coined in 347 Semitic, Sino-Tibetan, Bantu, and Indo-European languages.


Four

Newness filled the ancient heavens. The old moon showed her ancient scars. All scars tell an ancient story. We bled.


Five

This ridge.... the blade. That crater..... the stab.
The wound.
The healing.
The cicatrix.


Six

The red moon glowed her glyphic scars. We fled to the cave. We chanted the story.


Seven

All scars tell a desperate story. Stories that inspire stories. Stories that assassinate. See that ridge? …The blade. In the bloody shadows of this eclipsed moon we scratched codes. In the ashes. With a bone.


Eight

It was at least obligatory, perhaps inevitable, certainly embarrassing. Compulsive moon rhyming gripped the planet. Charter buses to Tin Pan Alley backed up the freeways like addicts in line for free methadune. No one was immune. Methadune? Immune?

The rough-hewn goon threw his harpoon at the cartoon baboon. “Oh a doubloon, a doubloon for a prune macaroon, a tune of Clare de Lune played by contrabassoon as I paddle my pontoon on the maroon lagoon, nibble crab Rangoon with a tablespoon, dream of poon on my honeymoon, read The Herald Tribune and scribble runes in the dunes as I commune with Neptune on a June afternoon” he crooned.

Oh do not impugn our jejune buffoon. Instead festoon a spittoon bestrewn saloon with balloons for him. Buy a round for the platoon of picayune tycoons in baggy pantaloons. And recite at noon "The Moon Is Distant From the Sea" By Emily Dickinsoon.


Nine

The fault shifted, the bridge collapsed, the bulb burned out, the night passed, the storm hit, the fever broke, the code cracked, the moon spoke, his voice cracked, her smile hardened, the sea swelled, the tremors started, structures collapsed, the moon screamed, the rules broke, the waking dreamed, harbors flooded, cities burned, a wall opened, the worm turned, his zipper stuck, her nipples pointed, the moon bled, their bodies parted, the night laughed, the moon joked, her scissors caught, his words choked, his wounds bled, the moon conjured, her wounds bled, the moon conjured, the moon conjured, the moon conjured, the moon conjured

the moon.
The moon conjured the moon.