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