“Blood Moon”

As geomancer, investigating, inventing out of her time a lash, a leash. To pull, to call back your citizenry identity, a patchwork, a prophecy.

Is this the longest or shortest century? Look into your human detonation. Astrological signs were a prominent motif in Zoroastrian apocalyptic texts. As the end of the current millennium approaches, they might say, they have said, they will be saying there will be signs, miracles, and wonders (nišān, abdīh, škoftīh; Dēnkard). Each century ends with an eclipse. The year, month, and day will become one-third shorter, the night brighter. The sun will show a mist, the moon will change color; earthquakes and violent winds will occur. Mercury & Jupiter will arrange “rulership for the wicked.” They say they have said they will be saying it over and over scrying the fallen city. He will not heed the votes. Never say his name or he will materialize at greater speed. And he does. Later when he is ruling (reading sand particles) “True kingship will never come to the Problematized One, when the planet Jupiter attains its exaltation and casts down Venus it will be a soldered sounder, over, sing, over,” a mere trumpeted voice. When Jupiter & Saturn meet, it will be conjunct to your trine, your eclipse, don’t wander. And don’t wonder The Wasted Problematized One. Don’t wander. Don’t be nostalgic. He wants you to wander. What rules? What problem to snuff him out. Shame Shame (fretting the skies). He is blurred in the text, a Polarizing One. Can you make the count come right down on him. The Moon turns blood in the fire of our time. On him. Blood on his hands. Intubation in the cenotaphs. He turns it blue to red, but Detroit is blue. In kinship? Or out of broken nation. Venus up in arms. Cupping the night. Not say the name. Don’t wander for your power. Don’t use your power. There is division, word too dangerous to be spoken to. In the strobing camera’s light firearms on display, poised, aim, a trigger in your belly. Sand on the floors of state. Sobbing in the take-down. Shifting, with slippery sand, a mercurial return, “sublimely unempathetic” as Agnes Martin might say. And this is the part of the dream of a battle scene: Persepolis heaving. I am called to this, called to precarity. Astral omens fighting conditio inhumana. Astral omens these days.

When a primary trigger has been dislodged, will you be ready? I see the way the streets divide, sliced. Gridded. And the commander is saying “a small mechanism”: just push it, please will you ready it for me? Desist, do not wander. Militia with a bullhorn on the lawn. Threat of lynching. Hide before activated. Hissing interception. Come out. A flock of birds because they register freedom on the border of cruelty. Detroit, the test of vision, long tentacles of liberation hold ground, hold blessed ground, stay, hold. Detroit is French for “strait.” Le Détriot du Lac Érié. Antoine de la Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, founded the city in 1701. Waawiiyaataanong, indigenous people called it.

WAA WII YAA TAAN ONG.

To be chanted or sung

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From Mesopotopia by Anne Waldman, published by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Anne Waldman.