Conversation in a Nutshell

Someone was enumerating
my relative advantages,
tossing peanut shells on the pub floor.
Besides being comely/flirty/friendly
she was, mostly, right;
pointing out that a wealth
of possibilities awaited always,
almost eager, at my very fingers' tips.

And while I could sorta see it
I answered that I was more likely
bound to pawn my birthday Bulova
than make the nutty claim as
King to some handy infinitude.

More poignantly,

I put it to her

that I often answer,
flinching, slave-like,
to the five-tined prod
of nickel and dime desires,
and find myself sadly slightly,
if at all, graced by goodness
for it's own sublime sake.

Of Iris, Forsythia and the Big Four-Oh

Who was once a child enamored
of the names of flowers
turns booze brutal on the cusp of 40
in the full foul fire
of a life's long frustration
during the pre-sleep hygiene routine;
leaves a sprinkling
of silver-backed shards,
a bloody trail of Rorschach blots
leading toward a king size bachelor's bed
with it's unilateral depression
favoring the reading light side
and the disordered pile of
Neruda, Rumi, Eliot and cummings.

A bloody wondering
between whiskey-rich
exhausted exhalations

what happened?

to the moments
of mellifluous mindfulness,

the coffee-shop calm
unperturbed by over-energetic
jangly, piped-in harpsichord music,

the delightful unconcern
with coventional conceptions
of pyschological security,

the body-calm,
clean and calibrated,
it's exercised genetic template
largely realized,

a cultivated awareness
in each major plexus
beyond mere appeasal
of gurgling, ganglial urges,

all an energy aligned,
a bow undrawn from which
flew arrows ardent, aspiring,
a forward moving force,
a heart-strong instrument
of life and prayerful thanks.

Abed, the unfiltered cigarette
snuffed with a disgusted twist,
a quick cataloguing ensues:
the pitiably predictable paunch,
stained fingertips and teeth,
a humbling and ridiculous array
of sport injuries and scars.

A final deep wheeze
before the sometimes startling
very vertiginous fall into
an oft bizarre dreamstage when
something torqued and tensed
came most wondrous easily undone
by simply repeating
the old lady dry cleaner's
answer to the question
about what that fragrant sprig
in a water glass on the counter
that smelled, to him at least,
of bergamot was-

A spray of freesia,
a spray of freesia,
a spray of freesia...

Mealtime (Lisboa)

It was like coming to abruptly.

There I was on foreign soil
stung awake among the sun-blasted
stones of the local architecture,
beneath the washed out blues
of a scorched summer sky.

I’d been shuffling sickly along
inwardly trying to translate
a line born between
cups of porto and cachaca
the night before...
“ the real world worth of
single things done lovingly.”

A stinking, semi-toxic hangover sweat
was beginning to claim me
when two thickly shod women
in black cardigans passed
hauling heavy mesh bags
containing (presumably)
that evenings uncooked meal.

They stood starkly out against
the radiating bleached whiteness
of the sunlit stone structures
that insistent Iberian mid-morning.

The language of the
dominant immigrant populace
of my hometown tickled
my baked and pickled brains,
aroused my dulled awareness.

I managed to shyly mumble
“ Bom dia Senhoras”
bashfully bowing my hammered head.

It was a modest gesture.

They responded
with a gleeful stream
of partially understood
questions and comments
to which I semi-stuttered
“de vera, eu nao falo Portuguese.”

I smiled to recall a former lover who’d
chided me laughingly some years ago:
“You dig flirting with septagenarians!”

When the apparently inevitable invitation
to dine with their family arrived
I accepted and blushed to recall
how my very first crush
was for one Christina De Sousa,
my heart fluttering over a
Fisher-Price kindergarten
breakfast of plastic bacon and eggs.

Returning from the horrible habit
of daydreaming in company
I took a few healthy gulps
of fizzy bottled water,
relieved the women
of their burdening bags
and wondered whether
peixe-espada was on the menu.