I saw a man in full ski mask
Drive past me behind the wheel,
My step stuttered, my heart hesitated
As all manner of dire imaginations
Flowed around and through me
Culminating with my five year old photo
Being featured prominently on cable;
My moment of fame come and gone
Without me being around to enjoy it.

Woman robbed and kidnapped
While waiting for her bus,
Body found down by Accotink Lake,
Shot dead with a gang related forty-four,
Her macheté'd body found scattered
Along the shoreline, up in the woods.

And then the bus arrived and I
Forgot about the ski mask and the man
Until I sat down to write these lines,
Notebook and pen in hand,
Hoping to god the news accounts
Hadn't described me as elderly.

Five hundred men, five hundred men,
Five hundred men dead and gone,
There are five hundred stars and crosses
On the meadow.

Lord I'm three, Lord I'm eight,
Lord I'm ten years in this war,
I don't think I can do another
Without dying.

Ther are one, there are two,
There are five thousand soldiers gone,
Can you see the stars and crosses
On the meadow?

We've had one, we've had two,
We can't take much more of this,
I don't think we can survive
Another fool.

Five thousand men, five thousand men,
Five thousand men dead and gone,
There are five thousand graves dug
In the meadow.

Working on a CONOPS for the coming new year,
Waiting on the Spring, the air chock full of chill,
The forecast for snow and sleet.
This afternoon the sun brightly shines
'Tho its warmth falls too far to the south;
Tonight will be sharp and clearly crystal,
The stars too numerous to count,
But tomorrow, tomorrow may find the snowfall
Two feet high and compiling.

There goes the weather guy,
Predicting snow and freezing;
I don't care if it is still winter,
He's not helping out much at all.

I want to see a bright sun shine
On warm white beaches and friendly shorelines,
Scantily clad men, all cut and well muscled,
And cutely figured women, young and well tanned.

Give me an island, Hawaii or Trinidad,
Or some ocean resort that's close to the equator,
Show me Australia, it's the middle of summer,
But stop with your ice and snow already.

If I had become a rock and roll star,
Sharpened my skills on the electric guitar,
I would have laced my words along the backbeat,
Singing, like Psappho, the melody of my lyrics
Accompanied by my own strings.

My face would be known, canto by canto,
My poems echoing in your head as you showered,
And I would be as good as only my next performance
Come Friday or Saturday at the civic auditorium,
The opening act for Lady GaGa or Degeneris
In my old age.

Dylan and I would have dallied
As our musical travels crossed,
John Lennon would have challenged me
Before surrendering to alcohol
And Yoko's request they go;
I would have been better known,
but not a better poet
While my early work became available
In career spanning compilations
And obscure bootlegs of that night
I sung with Bruce in the Garden.

But all that was not the path I chose,
And who's to say I would have survived
The drugs of the Sixties and all that followed,
Or the muse would not have deserted me
After the release of my mediocre third album.

End this, start that,
Go here, come there.

Around  around
Around  around,

Year after year,
Galaxy after galaxy,

Begin, expand
Expand  expand,

Darkly fade to black,
The End...

Here I shall dwell until the red sun consumes me,
Standing among the roses, inhaling their fragrances,
Discretely separating the dark expended buds
From their still green leather foliage while avoiding
The sharp blooding prick of the plant's defenses.

The rosebeds are painstakingly hand-tended,
Carefully seeded with crocus and daffodils
That no longer bloom in any future spring,
Then covered with ancient redwood chips
Stolen from the high valleys of the Sierra.

The long, warm rays slowly heat my flesh,
Triggering memories of my days beside you,
The nights we were caught up in wet, sloppy sex
And the slow, easy mornings we laid together
Until our now dying star shone high overhead.

Kubrick, Clarke, all gone except Dullea,
Including the dream and the Soviets;
We cannot let our cynicism pull us under,
We can no more alter the nature of the world
Than we can force change on our neighbor;
The poor will always be with us, as will hunger,
But we must bring them all much closer to us,
Not drag all the rest of us down to where
Hope is no longer a possible alternative
And the future only our endless past.

Ruffles, high fashion,
Tall women thinner than anyone can be,
Body skimming dresses that seldom bend,
Champagne, pale pink and lavender, all swarvoski,
Borrowed sparklies hanging from ears and neck,
Wrists encrusted with diamond bangles.

Two well positioned boobs for every woman,
One hard single thought for every straight man,
Expensive designers draping over all the curves,
Bow ties grasping at each masculine throat,
Soft beauty accompanied by old spice hard muscle,
Performing pair bonded for the paparazzi.

All the stars in the universe, or at least in Hollywood,
The women in living color, the men in black and white,
The primate gender binary strutting down the red carpet:
Gender theory must be rolling in its gray academic grave
As each beautiful woman and each more beautiful man
Smiles for the cameras watching them on television.

We live and Haiti does not,
No food, no bottom land, no water, no cemetaries,
A trading port for slaves abandoned by the French
Once the wealth ran out and best forgotten
By everyone else.

A half million dead, perhaps a million,
Not immediately, but over weeks
By starvation, dehydration and disease,
Dysentary, marlia, typhoid and plague
Racing each other for their next victim.

Children, children everywhere,
Fathers, mothers, all dead, every last one,
Who families gone except the children
Taking shelter on the streets from the storm.

Al gone, all gone,
Haiti is gone, all on a single winter's day,
By summer the island will slip from memory,
Pushed out of our consciousness
By the daily grind of work and living.

In five years, no one will even visit
The row upon row of mass graves
Except for children searching for their parents.

No one will remember Haiti,
Our attention will be elsewhere,
On dinner, on school, on finding the next promotion,
Until the next big quake, the next great hurricane,
The next newsworthy natural disaster
And the children of Haiti bubble to the top
Of our busy lives once more.

A rough cold wind roars across the commons,
Toppling everything not rooted to the Earth,
Windows rattle, screen doors shake,
Naked human flesh chills, burst by violent burst
As human eyes marvel at the brightness of the sunshine.

A winter blast of determined, frigid air
Winds south from the artic through Lake Superior,
Whistling through southern vents and half-bent branches,
Sending the feathered birds and well furred squirrels
Far aground in the safety of their hidden sanctuaries.