Forgotten Crossroad

He goes to this exact location,
the intersection of 72nd and Wister street
at precisely 3:00 p.m. on April 5,
but in the wrong year.
The note that sent him here is written in bold capitals,
underlined, and with three exclamation points.
The paper was found in a draw
that was closed for so long it warped.
He needed a knife to pry it open.
A long time ago he might have been at this intersection
or maybe not.
Is he visiting or revisiting the forgotten crossroad?
Once upon a time at this meeting of the roads,
there was a rendezvous—perhaps even a tryst—
but now nothing here jogs his memory.
He's here because he has nowhere else to go,
and for years he hasn't had to answer anyone's urgent call.
So now he does what he always does, stands and watches.
And he sees—
a woman struggling with a shopping cart,
a man scooping up after his dog,
kids coming home from school,
a couple arm in arm kissing,
and his reflection in the window of an almost empty store.
It catches him loitering and like a double exposure
a going out of business sign covers his chest.
                                                           

Traces And Residues

Once erasures were not so clean,
a thought fixed on the page could still linger.
Traces and residues gave testimony of failed first drafts.
Once there were thoughts so important
that time was taken to write them on a blank page.
All the erasing and all the white out
could not turn the paper pristine blank again.
An impression was made
so that with a broad stroke of a pencil
the repented idea could have been resurrected,
like a tombstone rubbing.

Now it's easier, much easier.
The first draft glows on the screen,
and can be canceled in nanoseconds.
Just overwrite the file with second thoughts
or pull the switch on RAM
and what was once thought worth recording
flickers off the monitor as the screen turns dark.
Disk memory? Delete. Hard copy? A shredder.
The thought is gone. It never existed.
No record. No record at all. All is blank.
The second thought is now pristine,
as if conceived in one flash of inspiration
without a history,
without an evolving from imperfection.

Older Women

On a neighborhood stoop now decades demolished,
we talked of older women in their twenties.
Older women in their twenties didn't have
to be home before nine, or homework to do,
or dads—much like ours—to answer to.
To us older women were like pots of gold,
but to them we seemed like local leprechauns.
One by one we left the stoop to follow our rainbows.
And one by one we found our older women,
but never any rainbows' end or pots of gold .
Rather it was we who had to give them gold,
golden wedding rings.
And much too quickly
we became those dreaded dads we had talked about
on that neighborhood stoop now decades demolished.

Imploding Worlds

Imploding world,
three sets of eyeglasses by a pillow,
water and orange juice on the night table,
crumbs in the sheets
pharmaceuticals on the dresser,
and a TV remote hiding in the blankets,
old lady weary of mornings
awakens to a shrunken world
as dad did twenty years ago
when she stood watch over him.
Lifetimes whittled down to sickbeds.
Orphan: a child deprived by death of one or usually both parents.
But I'm a child at this moment, standing here keeping vigil.
Soon I'll truly be an orphan.
And when someday my son keeps vigil over me—         

The Imitative Ability Of Cuttlefish

"Many watch cuttlefish watching them.
Their weird w-shaped pupils scan human forms.
Their tentacles brush against the aquarium glass.
Are they trying to touch?
They both blend in and stand out.
On their surfaces is a virtual reality expressed more sharply
than pixels on a computer screen."

Protean master of deception.
Biologically honed predator, ravenously hungry.
The brain directly controls the skin.
Chromatophores obey neural pulses.
Orange, red, green, khaki, iridescent blue
swirl like turbulent currents across its surface.
It flattens its skin smooth as volcanic glass,
or puckers it to sandy graininess.
It can even blend with yellow sunlight streaming down.
Its beauty is indeed only skin deep.
Its softness guarded within a chitin shell.
It wears its heart on its sleeve,
or rather its grasping tentacles.

But, like psychopaths, they know only anger, fear,
and spasms of tranquility in between.
Those emotions are also watercolors in their skin.
They can't love,
for one can't recognize the other as unique.
They live and die alone.
The one nuptial gathering is just a communal passing 
and mindless receiving of sperm packets.
The pairing afterwards only a guarding of sperm
from rivals who would sweep the former suitor's milt away.
They're sharp enough to navigate mazes.
It's what they need to know to survive.
But they don't question from where they came,
their mothers having died before they were hatched.
Neither do they wonder where they are going,
for all will die before their offspring can swim.
Generations, disconnected from generations,
hunting alone, in the ever present sea.

Guest List

That one in ten doctor who prescribes brand X,
the 0.0001% of the American electorate who vote to restore prohibition,
the premier interior decorator for trailer park denizens,
the heavy metal electric guitarist who plays Mozart softly,
a pork eating Chassid, and the Moslem who makes a haj from Mecca,
the diner who when offered either red or white wine with his truffles chooses
beer,
the pasta abhorring Italian and all Englishmen with a distaste for tea,
the rebel Zen monk who resolves a koan single-handedly by answering it
depends,
the one who never farts in a crowded room and his bean-eating cousin who
always trumpets a stampede,
and speaking of crowds,
the one who faces the rear in a packed elevator or never steps to the back a
jam-packed bus,
and to add flaming forbidden spice to the gala,
the culattone gangster who kisses his fairy godfather's anal sphincter,
all of them are invited and so are you,
for you share a common, quite a common denominator with the above invitees.
All of you who have nothing better to do than listen to this drivel have been
added to the list,
just give your name to the doorman and he'll click his heels, salute, and
open doors for  you—
you who sample words as hors d'oeuvres,
who tongue sentences for their texture,
who self-stimulate orally by mouthing stanzas,
who gargle in ink while both devouring and spitting out poetry.