You used to love the full moon, the way it could change its visage throughout the year; a fat yellow apple in summer, a small silver token in winter, and how it would spin from side to side like a dancer, showing a thin toenail one week, a thicker toenail the other, and back and forth it goes. You loved seeing it in full, though; you would almost make love to it if you could, but she hunts you now. If she sees you as you are, she strikes insanity into your heart, and the morning after you awaken to find nothing but shreds; your clothes shredded around you and a victim shredded by your teeth. --- The loup-garou comes, the loup-garou goes The birds eat seeds but he eats what bleeds The moon-face rises and the moon-face glows, The loup-garou loves her but on man-flesh he feeds --- You once had a farm, and a wife, and you tended chickens and cows. You were tall and handsome, with auburn locks gracing your ruddy face, and your sweat smelled alive. She was lithesome and kind, with breasts that rose and dove like the northern hills. Her skin was like pale honey, and her kisses as sweet. Her hair was like the night sky, blue-black with streaks of silver, like falling stars caught in spiderwebs. You buried her in the bayou, under weaver threads, and your eyes rained its guilt and shame into her soggy grave. Even the gators don't eat you, because when the moon-face comes and glows, you could tear them apart, too. You eat all that bleeds. --- The loup-garou's wife, he loved her true She sank in the mud while it mixed with her blood As the moon-face grew o'er that old bayou The cobwebs claimed her as nearby he stood --- You trudged out of that swamp, and your face dripped with tears and sweat and skeeter bites, but you didn't realize you had silent visitors at your back. They showed up with hatchets and butcher knives and axes. They had seen you carrying your love to the reeds, and you were still only half-man. The pawprints you made that night were like that of an old plott hound, but this morning your feet were as flat as ever. A rich man in the village replaced his lead with silver, and he joined the people in chasing you down at the edge of the bayou. The gators watched as they anchored you to a magnolia tree, and the village gifted you with silver. --- The loup-garou's judgment had come to pass The moon-face watched when they silvered a bullet Then a shot rang out through the reeds and grass The loup-garou howled as it pierced through his gullet The loup-garou comes, the loup-garou goes He eats what bleeds in the cattails and reeds His love for her grows like the swamp wind that blows The loup-garou loved her but on wife-flesh he feeds