PIANO MAN BLUES

Back room –
I sit & light a cigarette,
staring at my hands;
I can barely feel them

Doc says it’s neuropathy
probably pre-diabetic

I tell him there is
numbness in the fingertips,
can’t feel the ivories

How many years doc?

He shakes his head then
gazes at his shoes

Have you had a passion
in your life, I ask,
something so burning that
you would kill for it?

A beeper sounds –
time’s up he mumbles

SANS NAMES

Carl said he didn’t want
neon –
just good bricks & a door,
not even a sign

“Folks will hear the music
& maybe come in…
plenty people walking the
boulevards to

see a fuckin’ good jazz band
& drink bourbon –
neon juss a pile of bullshit!”

& ol’ Carl was right –
first night
there were people lined-up
along the bricks

waiting under a starry night –
sky & listening to a band
also with no name

_____

Mike Faran lives in Ventura, Ca. as a retired lobster trap builder. He is the author of We Go To A Fire (Penury Press) and is a Pushcart Prize nominee. His work has been published in Atlanta Review, Rattle, The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, and Slant.