Night of the Black Moon

We sit at the sushi bar
in Palm Springs,
under the skirt of the great mountain,
with cool mist pumped in
from Fiji or some such other-world
that I will never visit
nor grieve for.
I enjoy the mist because it is
dissipating the desert's hot breath
upon our cheeks.
The waiter is jolly and energetic;
he is busy;
he skips and even jogs;
he is making money tonight;
it is a good night for us all
here.

Our waiter is very adept,
I think,
at forgetting
that he is going to die some day;
in that moment,
we were too:
It was a stillness amongst the
drowning world
that we had found,
that let us forget.
Though usually it is the chaos
that allows
that one sweet pleasure.

We make up stories
about pirates and farmers,
swans who prance
in flame and they are
coughing fire
through the fog,
and the sailors, they
cough smoke in the blackness.
There is no moon,
the moon has forgotten
that it is tied to Earth,
to this story,
that it has a life and a death,
that it is mortal, too;
we are like flies in its vision.
It has forgotten to care.
The moon doesn't care about them
because they are doomed anyway,
as we all are.

So how do we find care
in our doomed lives,
our lives of impending death?

I suppose
we forget.

It's easy most of the time,
what with all the noise:
just make things complicated,
become a stream of little
useless emotions to drown out
the fear,
the one great Fear,
the one great Lie
that started Fear,
the Lie that we told ourselves
that says that since we don't understand
death
it should be feared.
The philosophers, they say:
It is the human condition.
(Or some such bullshit.)

But I think it's just
easier
in the Night of the Black Moon
to forget than to accept.
It's not fate,
it's just
easier.