The Big Sandy Mountaineer -

Destruction is the most beautiful

of cabarets. Grasshoppers

caked to the grill of a collapsing Oldsmobile

bloody as a buffalo jump.

Locusts are a plague of reason,

a systemic and measurable loss --

they flow like an ice cream symphony

in a sky of marbled doom.

They are no more than populated

wind, and there is no farmer

who does not manage wind.

Grasshoppers are a disheveled horde,

chaos miles wide, drooling brown,

longing to jam themselves

into open mouths, ride like surfers

on wailing tongues. You cannot survive

even half a grasshopper inside your mind,

As a species, they know the itch

of immortality. If it is green,

leafy, you must consume it.

If it is breathes inside a dome

of purple flesh, you may just sit back

rest your clicking haunches,

be patient – you are here forever,

it will disappear.