Sep. 8, 2004 "American Romanticism" and "Blue Heavens High" :devprivateerlunatic:

Sep. 15 2004, "Portrait with Hood and Bindings"

Sep. 22 2004 "Avalanche"

Sep. 29 2004 "Watching the Good Trains Go By"

Oct. 6 2004 "Out"

Oct. 13 2004 "The Shirt"

Oct. 20 2004 "This Is the Time of Grasshoppers and All That I See Is Dying"


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I went to the river, but the river was dry.
I fell to my knees, and looked to the sky.
—Emmylou Harris



Colleen,
this is the time of grasshoppers
and all that I see is dying except
for my virulent love for you.



The Cowturdville Star-Times, which
usually has a typo in every column,
says the grasshoppers this year
“are as big as Buicks” and
that’s not bad, but then we
get two eight-point pages
of who had dinner with whom
at the bowling alley café and
who went shopping at Target
in Rapid City and thus the high
church of Adrian the Obscure is sacked.



Even my old Dylan tapes are fading,
becoming near-comic antiques.
The grasshoppers are destroying
our yard and they’re as big as
my middle finger saluting God.
The grass is yellow. The trees
look like Agent Orange has hit
but it’s only the jaw-work of those
drab armored insects who dance
in profusion and pure destruction.



Sweet woman, dear love of my life,
when you’re not angry and sputtering
at everything and everyone, you
become so childlike, so pure.
Your voice seems to have grown
higher recently, almost a little girl pitch.



Today, like most days, I have you
home for your two-hour reprieve
from the nursing home prison.
We’re sitting at the picnic table in
the backyard staring at the defoliation
of lilacs, brain-matter, and honeysuckle.



You’re eating a Hershey Bar and
a crystal glob of snot is hanging
from your nose.
I reach over, pinch it off,
and wipe it on my jeans.
You thrust the last bite
of chocolate into my mouth
as a demented grasshopper
jumps onto your ear.
You scream. I howl
with laughter until you do, too.
Happiness comes with a price.



This is the time of grasshoppers
and all that I see is dying except
for my swarming love for you.



Last night on PBS some
lesioned guy being screwed to death
by legions of viral invisibility
blurted the great cliché of regret:
I wish that I could be twenty
again and know what
I know now . . .



My own regrets are equally foolish.
And, I wonder how the hell
is it I’ve reached a place
where I’d give what’s left
of my allotment of sunsets
and frozen dinners
for some unholy replay
of just one hour in some nearly
forgotten time and place?



Darling,
in the baked soil of the far west,
I first saw the ant lions, those
hairy little bugs who dug funnel
traps for ants in the dry earth.
At twelve, looking over the edge
of one such funnel surrounded by
a circle of tiny stones in the sand,
I aimed a beam of white light
from my magnifying glass
and found I could recreate
a hell of my own accord.



Poverty and boredom
made me cruel early on.



The next summer while digging
postholes I found a cache of
those grotesque yellow bugs
we called “Children of the Earth”
so I piled matches atop them
and barbecued their ugliness.
I was at war with insects.



In my fifteenth summer I got
covered with ticks in the sagebrush
and that fall I nervously lost my cherry
in a cathouse called the Green Front



and got cursed with crabs but that’s
not what I want to sing about
at all . . . come on now.



This is no bug progression.



This ain’t no insect sonata.



This is only misdirection,
a sleight of hand upon the keys
and the unholy replay of just
one hour in some nearly
forgotten time and place
that I’d like to return to
will remain myth or maybe
a holy, tumescent mystery.



And let’s not call
these bloodwords
POETRY or a winter count
of desperate dreams
when reality is much simpler.



Colleen,
this is the time of grasshoppers
and all that I see is dying except
for my sparkling love for you.



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The 2000 Cohen Award Winner, this poem is by Adrian C. Louis. Let the image wash over you.