The word "moon" never appears in Dave Bonta's "Lunatic," yet the whole poem circles it. The title does the work. "Lunatic" comes from the Latin *luna*, the moon, and goes back to the old belief that moonlight could unsettle the mind. With that in view, the two short stanzas read as a quiet act of defection. The speaker turns away from the sun that everyone else obeys and applies for a position with the moon.
The first stanza sets up the hierarchy it will overturn. "Common people have / their own lord the sun" borrows the language of feudalism, and the sun becomes a landlord whose rule nobody voted for. Note how plain the wording is. "Their own lord the sun" is five one-syllable words in a row, flat and blunt like a decree. Then comes the strangest line: "high but quiet as a well." A well is deep, not high, so the simile drags an upward image downward and makes the sun lofty and bottomless at once. The poem doesn't explain the comparison, but it suggests a few things. The sun gives light to everyone and answers nobody. A well is also where ordinary people draw their daily water, so this lord may be one who sustains without ever speaking. Either way, "quiet" is the key word. A lord who never replies is a poor candidate for correspondence.
That may be why the second stanza turns to a letter. The "I" arrives here for the first time, and the poem moves from a general "common people" to a single, slightly rebellious voice. "I would write a letter" is conditional and tentative, and it is also an oddly humble, human act. A letter needs someone on the other end. The addressee is "a better lower one," and the phrase turns the usual logic of rank upside down. In a hierarchy, lower normally means lesser, but here "better" and "lower" sit side by side as if they belonged together. The moon is lower in standing and also nearer, more approachable, easier to petition.
The sound of the stanza changes as well. The first is built mostly from short, hard words. The second loosens into two-syllable words, "letter," "better," "lower," "venture," and an *-er* chime runs through it, ending on "her." There is no end rhyme anywhere, and no punctuation at all. The lines run on like a single thought let slip, and the short final line, "from month to month," has no full stop to close it. That lack of closure suits the subject, since months and moons come around again.
The business vocabulary is the sharpest turn. To "venture to hire her" brings in employment, or perhaps renting, and "venture" carries a hint of risk and enterprise. The sun is a lord you are born under, but the moon is someone you can take on and let go. The deal is "from month to month," a contract that matches the moon's own rhythm of waxing and waning. The speaker, a commoner, ends up as the employer. Judging by the pronoun, the moon is also "her" where the sun was a "lord," which adds a gentler, perhaps more equal, relationship to the reversal.
So who is the lunatic? The title may be the world's label for anyone who prefers the changeable and intimate to the fixed and overwhelming. It may equally be the speaker's own wry self-description. The poem seems to enjoy both readings and keeps its tone light, even a little comic, while asking a real question about authority. Do we want a power that rules us from far above and never speaks, or one we can write to, bargain with, and renegotiate each month?
That is what makes the poem worth reading. In seven short lines it takes in social class, the night sky, the history of a single word, and a joke about job contracts, and it leaves the reader to decide how seriously to take its madness.