Angel's Share

 I'm dusting the shelves, touching the bottles 'hello' as they each have a part in a story about to unfold. 

"How is life?"

"I am a glass of Martini, shaken AND stirred."

"Why do you have a bread tattooed on your wrist?"

"If you could put your heart at your mouth, what would it say?" 

"How was that elephant placenta soup?"

"Did you know that an elephant has 32 souls, like humans?" 

"I don’t believe it man!  I feel like the IRON MAN. Fucking solid tonight! I don’t know what I want next.. I love THIS drink, and I don’t even like ginger. Nor whisky. You put the big spell on me."

"It's good to know what to serve to whom."

How many limes have I peeled, juiced and squeezed so far? Why is everyone having G&Ts tonight? Why is it Tanqueray every time?  The other night, everyone wanted Old Fashioneds. It's gotta be the moon… Elon Musk should be begging for forgiveness for messing with it... 

I light a candle.

"That won’t make me look better!"

‘Oh, but if that was my intention, I would go dim the lights.’  

The moon is half full, hanging in the sky like a boat. 

“What is up with Gin &Tonics tonight?" 

"You know how a G&T is … like a really good Club Sandwich? You know what I mean. How one feels about Club Sandwiches. Wherever you have it, however they make it, it’s always good.

"You see I’m a chef. I compare everything to food."

'...at the heart of Saturday night...', creaks Tom Waits like an ever so rusty radio perpetually drunk on the moon at closing time.

 

It also happens to be a Saturday.  Up in the eternal midnight sky there is the next melody... Grapefruit Moon...

“Lack of clarity only means that everything is possible.”

Everything is connected. My hands to a hundred-thousand limes going into your drinks; memories triggered by a piece of music only our souls can truly hear. 

"Your bar is like a melting pot. Like a soup with all different ingredients inside."

"More like a barrel of whiskey, I say. The angel’s share… our words to one another evaporate while the spirit inside gets stronger with time.

xo

Portable Midlife

 

I am crippled in ways I don’t understand.

I am stronger in ways that it makes me mad.

I used to love deadlines. 

 

Not loving the elongated existential crisis either. 

 

I have lived in a make-believe for 25 years. 

I have the same friends - we made the “cut”. 

We actually talked about how we lifted like odd rice that floats on top of the water. 

We won’t be cooked with the rest. 

Broken, damaged, yes. 

We know the worst about one another and fucking stick together. 

Everyone else is going to be eaten.

We are harder to impress, and we have no time for bullshit.

My super bifocals can see only as far as the door. 

It is a bit strange out there. 

Non-binary dogs are running around with no balls on a leash- 

and I am reminded to address that dog as ‘them’.

Shocking but I can’t remember what the owner identifies as. 

Self-important - perhaps, in my self-conscious asshole opinion. 

 

I visited one of the Buddhist temples last week.

I was getting over dengue fever and had very little of anything left in me.

I asked the abbot if my aura seemed alright to his eyes of clear lakes and bright skies. 

Between the age of 50 and 60, he said, 

it is very common to pull a blank on everything.

It’s like being the star of a black and white movie 

that nobody is getting tickets for—

because there are none for sale. 

The plot is uncertain, the heroin’s superpower is invisibility 

while filling in those blanks with a ‘how the hell’ or a ‘why’. 

 

Well, okay then, it is what it is for the next couple of years.

 

Expecting the worst:

AI will do the thinking for everyone,

everyone will have the same appeal and interest.

One of those dams will break on the Nam Khaan. 

Tourism becomes a sneak biting its own tail, 

gradually 

swallowing 

itself. 

AI generated songs will make the charts. 

By the time I’m over the current crisis of my own, 

I get to be back in a technicolor world I might not even recognize. 

 

And this is the most positive I can get:

everything will turn out just fine, 

because while

‘change’ is now just a trending app, 

transformation is inevitable.

 

 

2024. October

 

 

 

 

Connected

Streets empty with sunlight, birdsong,

and the sound of wheels on the road.

I stop at a store.

Five apricots and a tomato.

The saleswoman offers to wash them before she puts them in a bag for me.

On my way to the cemetery I eat the apricots first. 

One by one. They look ripe but they aren't.

 

A dog starts barking behind a fence 

“ Beware! Unknown human heading south, eating a tomato!”

The dog-network is activated, and now all bark at nothing.

The  path leading to the family crypt is scattered with pine cones. 

A wild rosebush curiously  leans over the headstone this any-day afternoon. 

I wander around the back and see it sprung from the old crypt—

perhaps from my mother’s heart.

I imagine the quiet union of caskets and roots. 

Maybe violets grow down there all year around.

My parents, having an afternoon tea, talking about all the things 

they forgot to tell me.

I pull out the stubborn weed growing through the cracks—

some humble openings into the otherworld.

I feel appreciated.

I feel loved. 

Nobody Says Hello

I walk in the rain. 

On the Danube, 

the many bridges fade into fog.

Nothing gets done. 

Nothing is never important enough.

The lines are down— 

no banking, no activation, no phone—

Promising for this misty afternoon.

A retro cheese melt and a cup of espresso

on the road.

Hellos and goodbyes come with 

the lifting of the fog.

La Salle des pas Perdu

‘ The room of lost steps’ is what they call

‘ waiting room’ in French.

Another ticket expires

come midnight.

To get a new one every morning to a destination, a mindset,-

and for each, we pay a different price. 

“ Mom, I think if you could, you would live inside your soul.”

We  wait.

IT

 

‘Sit down,’ I say, ‘sit down and think about it.’

‘About what?’ 

‘It.’ 

 

There was a time you look back and think, "Yep, that was perfect."

And it was! And you know it.

 

There was that moment when you said to yourself, "Oh my god, 

the street I live on should be named after me! I can’t believe I did it."

 There was a day when you saw her making the right decisions without you,

and you were sad and happy about it. Mostly, you were proud.

 

There was a night when being the night itself was just another dream.

It was what it was. It is, what it is.

 

There was a whole year when you thought you lost the will to live,

but you made it through and lived anyway.

 

There was an afternoon when you asked for what you wanted with no agenda, 

and it was given to you. 

 

The timeline is a jump rope. 

Jump, jump, jump.

 

Nobody is really watching. They might be curious, you might want— not 

so much to be accepted, but to be seen, understood, acknowledged. Forget 

it. As long as you’re jumping.

 

Did the world skip rope a year and tripped over checks and balances, data, and facts? 

 

True Zen. I mean, in this world, in this cocoon of a home, 

in this body, in these cells, inside this mind, there are question marks, laughing monkeys 

and sad ones, a few terrified ones that keep pulling the tails of the others, 

but the others choose not to give them the time of day. 

 

It makes sense.

.

Words alone 

mean

nothing.

We  are 

the chance,

the will,

the magic.

With every breath,

we forge another eye to the chain

of hope.