Howling at the Moon

¡Hola! Everybody... Yesterday I went with some friends to see the Harvey Milk biopic titled Milk. It’s one of the best movies I have seen this year, with Sean Penn turning in a nuanced, compelling performance. Director van Sant has constructed a piece of work that avoids all the usual pitfalls of biopics (melodrama being one). His characters are human: they have character defects and sometimes make bad choices -- gee, they’re human just like the rest of us?!!

van Sant manages a powerful retelling a of an important story and while at the same time faithfully documenting a human rights movement.

The movie conflict revolves mostly around a 1970s California referendum, Proposition 6, which proposed making it legal to fire openly gay people. The irony is that the same excuses used by the religious right back then, were used to drum up fear for the recent Prop Hate (or Prop. 8 as it is better known).

Bigotry is bigotry no matter how much you try to dress it up as moral self-righteous indignation or religious dogma. What this movie is ultimately about is human dignity. Sean Penn tore it up...

Anyone interested in seeing the repeat of history (I kept thinking of the Santayana quote, “Those who refuse to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it”) and the parallel “arguments” against human dignity, should check out the 1984 award-winning documentary, The Life and Times of Harvey Milk.

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-=[ I’m Over the Moon ]=-

-- Brenda Shaughnessy

I don’t like what the moon is supposed to do.

Confuse me, ovulate me,

spoon-feed me longing. A kind of ancient

date-rape drug. So I'll howl at you, moon,

I'm angry. I’ll take back the night. Using me to

swoon at your questionable light,

you had me chasing you,

the world’s worst lover, over and over

hoping for a mirror, a whisper, insight.

But you disappear for nights on end

with all my erotic mysteries

and my entire unconscious mind.

How long do I try to get water from a stone?

It's like having a bad boyfriend in a good band.

Better off alone. I’m going to write hard

and fast into you moon, face-fucking.

Something you wouldn’t understand.

You with no swampy sexual

promise but what we glue onto you.

That’s not real. You have no begging

cunt. No panties ripped off and the crotch

sucked. No lacerating spasms

sending electrical sparks through the toes.

Stars have those.

What do you have? You're a tool, moon.

Now, noon. There’s a hero.

The obvious sun, no bulls hit, the enemy

of poets and lovers, sleepers and creatures.

But my lovers have never been able to read

my mind. I’ve had to learn to be direct.

It’s hard to learn that, hard to do.

The sun is worth ten of you.

You don’t hold a candle

to that complexity, that solid craze.

Like an animal carcass on the road at night,

picked at by crows,

haunting walkers and drivers. Your face

regularly sliced up by the moving

frames of car windows. Your light is drawn,

quartered, your dreams are stolen.

You change shape and turn away,

letting night solve all night's problems alone.

* * *

Love,

Eddie