After Dinner

            

It’s tight at our table,

unknown parts of the same group,

face to face and she wants

to teach me to drink Cognac.

The waiter brings snifters and a bottle,

she mulls it over hot tea –

sets the pear-shaped bottom on its side

pours like ‘time has stopped’ slowly

the amber liquid into the heated glass.

Small deft hands stroke the aged decanter

as warm zephyrs intoxicate

the narrowing space between us.

“Sip and swirl, don’t swallow,

let it slide down your tongue,

ease into your throat.

You have to get past the alcohol

and taste the fruit.

Great tasters can tell the grape,

the region, the exact plot of ground.”

My ground is sinking around me,

my face and limbs like embers

as the slick silk glides

as she has instructed,

…. and then she does hers….

the French would be proud.

She circles the rim of the glass,

discovers a drop of the nectar,

with the slightest of smiles

and mink eyes stuck to mine,

puts her finger to my lips

and asks me again to taste the fruit.

sifting through the nuts

    sifting through the nuts

I’m sitting here on a humid

August Sunday afternoon

sifting through a can of mixed nuts,

wanting to write about

‘sitting on humid afternoons’

and worrying about plagiarizing

writers old and new

who have done similar.

What could I say

that hasn’t been said,

or how could I know

or not know?

Can I be content with

‘I haven’t said it before’

at least on paper,

at least on a Sunday afternoon,

at least not in my underwear

with a mouthful of pecans,

waiting as I seem to be

for evening to fall,

to produce something incomparable,

something so clearly original

that it will make the Planter’s man

tip his top hat, perhaps

even remove his monocle?

Doorknocker

             

Dorothy and her entourage on the front porch

wearing those ruby shoes

dinged up from yellow bricks,

asking directions, in search of a wise man,

wanting the unknown behind every door,

in every home, in every neighborhood.

Toto, provocateur, seeming innocent,

jumps from her arms

uninvited through the legs of the doorkeeper,

darting from room to room,

yapping, making mental notes

as the unexpecting jump to cover themselves.

Do you know the way to Oz?

I have to find the wizard.

My friends and I can cook you dinner

from whatever you have on hand

but we really need your help.

We could use some courage,

compassion and a brain,

a quick skip to the heart of the matter,

then back to Auntie Em,

with a Totoful of low-down

from all our different stops.

I have to know what witches and wizards

do outside of Kansas,

their tales of grist and girth.

I need to stop clicking these heels

and sleeping with munchkins,

I need to snoop through your pantry,

and break into song.

I need to hear your story.

eight cups a day

I’m reading this magazine article

on the end-table in the doctor’s waiting room

that compares ‘universal consciousness’

to drops of water that form together to create a lake.

Once in the examination room the doc explains that

all 6.7 billion assholes should drink eight cups a day

to maintain true health.

I assume the most efficient way to accomplish this

would be one every two hours that I’m awake.

Set the cell phone alarm, make it spring or bottled, not tap.

Or wait , better to ladle it from that ‘lake of drops’.

Let those cups come together and forge a new me

with a social conscience, maybe even a desire to vote.

As the therapy grows and becomes the rage

we will all come to realize that we’re more than

dehydrated egos, devouring and pushing things

inside these ugly bags of skin

and that we all drink from the same waters,

need to see Dr. Harding and would benefit greatly

from reading the same magazines.

Breakfast and some news at the ‘Twin Kiss’ Diner

     

The booth was claustrophobic.

The sports section I held between us

was like a volleyball net,

your stares lofting over

like shots of fresh egg

I couldn’t spike.

When Alice came to take your order

and you looked at each other

for the first time, the silence

was as thick as the coffee.

Twins – identical,

if her hair had been curled

and she’d had some cleavage.

I can’t remember who

was first to speak, probably me,

but then you ordered.

One egg, one sausage –

one carb.

I felt I had to order two of something

just on principle.

You ripped my ‘Post’ to shreds

and smashed my reading glasses

before you stormed out of the diner.

I wasn’t sure if it was the five sugars

I snuck in your coffee

or my comment about

your hang-ups being cultural,

most likely it was my suggestion

we get together with the waitress

when she was done her shift.

I stood four-eyed in front

of the cash register

as Alice gave me six quarters

change for a dollar

for a USA Today,

winked, cracked her gum,

lightly dragged her forefinger

across her lower lip,

stuck out her studded tongue

and walked back into the kitchen.

Fast Food

       

They were sitting across the aisle in McDonald’s.I had meant to read some ‘Mules of Love’

with a Filet-o-Fish and the

card-carrying people watcher in me took over.

The couple appeared to be in their eighties;

she with fragile, pale, liver-spotted skin, thick bifocals

and stand-up off the forehead white hair

like the silk on fresh shucked corn.

Dressed in a sleeveless lime green blouse,

long white skirt with green and red polka dots

and a plastic pearl necklace with alternating beads

of the same colors.

He was ruddy, a too-red face under a gray crew cut;

a tan knit with a zipper placket

and Montgomery Ward’s shorts,

socks to the knees and tan Hush Puppies.

They sat facing each other, but their eyes never met

and I’d swear they never said a word.

She chewed her fries slow like cud,

he sipped his senior-discounted coffee,

and the stereotypes kicked in.

Dressed for an early dinner date.

Helped one another out of the apartment.

Going back home to TV [no cable],

the afternoon news, in bed by dusk.

At that age how sweet to have someone

to do for and have done.

He got up slowly and disposed of her trash.

They left with the smallest of steps.

Ellen Bass grinned at me from the back of her book

with a slight curled lip at such pre-judgements,

wondering why fast food and not the sushi bar.

Our exiting lunch-liners exchanged pecks on the parking lot,

she with her hand on his cheek, and drove off in separate cars

and opposite directions.

I glanced back at Ellen and assured her that we’d just had

an extra-value meal that didn’t need super-sizing.

Boardwalk Bijou

     

The morning bicyclers were not out yet

and dunes hid me, hungover, half asleep.

I knew she could not see me watching them

as they came to the boardwalk hand in hand,

a grandmother with a child about four.

Her gray hair blended with the gray of dawn

and took a hot rose frost from the red tinge

of first light bouncing off the purple clouds.

She sat the child formally on the bench

as though ushered into a theatre,

folding her hands in delicate white gloves,

her pocketbook carefully in her lap.

The new sun free above the horizon -

the bench now small against the grandeur of

a bonfire sky on molten metal waves –

a tear reflects like mirror on her cheek,

“I made the trip so you wouldn’t miss this”,

the girl yawns early blue eyes at our show.

I warm to an all-encompassing gold

and the maternal heat of a new day.

Cocktails at the McCafferty's

  

Polo and Marcy

announce their engagement.

Edwardo demonstrates his backhand.

Bishop Sheen glares

smilingly over his mint iced tea,

and as the olive turns

in my stomach

I spill martini

on my new flannel pants.

Molly becomes concerned.

Closing her Chippendale eyes

she wraps her Andalusian lips

around the stain

and I remember,

tongue in cheek,

why I had agreed to come.

Blue Notes

     

Jazz pulsed,

permeated the room,

melted it out of focus,

unimportant, unaware,

banter drifting into unintelligible

tapping of cowbell and snare.

The flute shooting blonde lava,

bass thumping in my loins -

the candles,

your lips and eyes,

quivered across the table

as the shadows soothed soft cleavage,

and hair stroked with molten honey

caressed your cheeks,

oozed lightly onto your shoulders.

We sipped martinis

with pointed tongues.

The waiter, arms folded,

patiently and to the beat

tapping his right forefinger

against his left forearm

couldn’t ask us to order,

wouldn’t interrupt.

Clementine and Cleopatra

In the middle of the sale

she fell dead asleep.

There was a chance of showers

so I let her rest - no toothbrush,

and now it’s noticed no umbrella,

just the set of new encyclopedias

on the coffee table

opened to the ‘C’s.

Perhaps a stepmother cruelly treated her,

forced her to sell to exhaustion –

now she naps -

a petite princess, maybe a 5 and a half,

looking magically submissive,

trusting her new customer

like one would a godmother

and obviously the weather.

When she awakes I’ll introduce her

to my neighbor – a psych major - he’s her age,

single and has a foot fetish.

I’ll make sure she leaves
a navy pump in his room

so that he can find her right foot

and determine the dynamics

of her dysfunctional domicile.

I know he’ll fall in love –

he always does -

and perhaps marry our door-to-door coquette,

piss off the stepsisters, get the books for free,

loan them to me until he needs them.

I want to finish the Cinderella story

and am looking forward to

Clementine and Cleopatra.

Amtrak

                   

Work Ethic and I are at a crowded Penn Station

standing in front of the Big Board,

waiting for our track to flash.

A few move up - Boston, Trenton -

but the crowd doesn’t move.

They are all waiting for our train and it’s late.

W.E. kills the time

by pretending he’s an alien

taking reconnaissance notes.

They are upright with pink epidermis, one head, and two legs.

Left appendages pull fairly large black box-like tails on wheels

and the right pushes small black boxes to the side of the head.

Only a very few have had these tails removed and almost all talk to themselves.

Finally – Washington: track 15 –

and the bustle starts to the escalator.

We rush a bit to stand and wait,

but now we are focused,

we all know where we’re going.

I lose W.E. in the crowd and think

about his surveillant scribble.

All seem motivated by some God-like force to flee at the same time,

but move poorly as a unit like a funnel full of

roaches.

I’m not worried, he gets lost quite often

but always resurfaces.

He’s fun to hang with and doesn’t drink much.

He travels light and takes good notes.