used to think that the older i’d get
the more i’d have to say
an idiom for every thing
a clever turn of phrase
a story for the travel-worn
a poem to stir the cynic
a song to sooth the furies
an oft-repeated lyric
a verse to bend the adamant
a piercing anecdotal
they’d say i was a character
as colorful as opal
they’d come from far away
to hear my pearls of wisdom
from tel aviv to mars
and outside the solar system
my native tongue irrelevant
i’d have the ears of elephants
octopi and flies alike
affected by my eloquence
antiquity’s great orators
would come to me as angels
present to me their inquiries
and wait for my appraisals
a hurricane would pause
its revolution for a while
if only for a chance to watch
me verbalize in style

but one day something in me
snapped and i understood
that all of what i thought would be
most likely never would

now I’m resigned to the alive
consigned to the dead
so most of the time i just
keep my thoughts inside my head