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.