"Blue Moon"
They’re gathering now
cone-head ghouls Spider-Man
fly-by-nighters’ burnt-cork cheeks
flailed sheets and twiggy voices
Mama stalking a border dog’s
crescent around back around
as if to fend off certain harm
October’s second sodium moon
basting the street and barbecue ribs
and links she smoked all day
to keep her four boys close
no begging door-to-door not
with new monsters wakened
Anything can happen here
tonight unlike past years free
to knock and shriek
now they spook themselves
overdub hip-hop shouts going
nowhere fast these fearless fat
boys past whom skip fuzzy whelps
tittering mice and bunnies clamped
to adults who keel them house
to house and now I see them
as a broken flock of dispersed
wild children wandering
adults and myself among them
like medieval gangs of the blind
the destitute the deranged the lost
beyond our ranks of city lights
to beg and thumb our way
suburb to rail tracks to hills
across lunar stubble fields.
Source: Brother Fire: Poems (2004)
Photograph: Muzi Quawson
