Burning A Guitar

Let’s burn a guitar
for the honor of those
who’ve died among us
and made us sing 
in their wake.

Let’s pretend
to reggae, let’s
assume the position
of blues;

though we’re lying sacks
of middle-class shit
when we do that
tonight
our dead friends have signed
the permission slip
for those journeys, so

under that whiter than white moon
let’s light a fire
and coax last songs out of
a broken, rackety-rick pawnshop axe,
singing

Sloop John B,
Statesboro Blues,
Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?

then listening to the flames 
in the snapping strings
as the poor old thing
disappears in the smoke,

just as we will later disappear
into the dark
around a fading fire.