I am a middle-aged grasshopper
fiddling my way to Winter
I can feel it coming
smell it in the air now
my days are getting shorter
and soon I will know my first Winter
and my last
and I see the ants all around me
going about the business of their days
while I fiddle away in mindless joy
I am free from all their cares and concerns
I share none of their worries or woes
and every moment of my life is filled
with more bliss than they will ever know
but the price to be paid is Winter
when the long night comes
they will have time for reflections
they will enjoy a sacrifice-earned peace
and plenty
that I will never know
they will possess a special wisdom
born only of accomplishment
that I am doomed to covet
but never share
the precious sounds I drew from my strings
that spread so much joy to so many for so long
lost now in the howling winds of the storm
and lost soon after even to memory
but that I enjoyed it all every second
to the fullest
every moment but the last
there is no sign to mark my passing through or by
no trace left of me where I danced my life away
but perhaps the impression of an almost imperceptible
****
in the new-fallen snow that covers me where I lay
next to the towering mountain hill of the ants
teeming with the frenzy of the living
who will know a second Spring

Last night, I took a twenty dollar bill from my drawer
the last one
marked it with my words
in thick, black ink
grabbed a tack from the desk
and went wandering the alleys and backways and sideways of my town
scanning for the right spot
the right time
And alone on Cumberland, across from Potomac
I found a pristine telephone poll
sprouting tall and straight from the asphalt
like an urban redwood
Took the knife from my belt
the tack from my teeth
BOOM
BOOM
BOOM
and I walked away, heart pounding
hoping no one heard, no one saw
leaving the twenty hanging there like jesus
like a sign
in thick, black ink
asking,
"What do you REALLY want?"

I feel like a fraud.

trace the lines of your body,
with my hand by yours,
and take me to a different world,
unknown to most,
but known to most,
and tell me how to touch,
and tell me how to kiss,
and tell me how to love you.

because i don't know what the **** to do.

he had a third beer
before the hot platters came    
he would have had another, had she not
stared, like she going to ask every question
he did not want to answer…
how did it feel to slap his first wife?    
how did it feel to pull the trigger  
and mow men down like so many weeds?
those were the questions in her eyes  
and had he ever told anyone, what happened that night  
when they came upon a village, where the young ones
slept with the dead, their ancestors
only a few feet away, watching, mute,
beyond the paddies where they planted the rice,
the narrow trails where they hunkered and spoke
the ancient tongue, not adulterated by the romance of the French
or the clumsy amalgam of shredded sounds from the new soldiers  
the giants who ignored them in the steaming light of day
but came one night, bringing strange smells, oiled steel
muzzles pointed at their faces, shoved into their empty ears
grunting and groaning in an even more grotesque tongue  
leaving tears and trembling in their wake,
the torn flesh, the wounded wombs, the silken vessels  
meant to be there for the milky planting of tomorrow’s seeds  
not the greedy groping of the interloper’s devilish deeds  
was she asking about that night, the sounds he recalled
like puppies under heavy foot, or worse, like
the madding moaning of his own sister
when someone ripped her open  
not in the distant killing fields
but in the back seat of her car  
not two miles from where they sat  
where he ordered more beer, and
she asked those questions with her silence,
with her eyes, the questions he would never answer  
not after all the beer, in all the free world,
and he was pitifully glad
they served no sushi, in Kiki’s, though
the sharpened knives were there
ready for his confessional
and the raw slaughter of truth