Just think about your own failings
You slouch and walk with duck feet.
You procrastinate in everything you do.
You belch your fear of the unexpected
and fart your hatred of the unknown.
You lust and cheat and lie and drink.
You make mistakes, cover them up,
then make the same mistakes, again.
Consider your own fallibility
and know this, brother;
your doctor, your dentist, your president,
they are no different than you.
The brain surgeon has a fight with his wife,
drives too fast in his green jaguar,
late for his appointment
to open your cranium.
He rushes into the operating room
out of breath, fingers trembling,
wishing he could wrap them
around her throat,
instead of your aneurism.
The endodontist performs a root canal,
grinding his tiny file in and out
of your aching tooth, day dreaming
of last night's tryst
in a cheap motel.
At the White House
a Marine Lieutenant in full dress
opens the briefcase
which is shackled to his wrist
and presents it to the President.
A young woman watches
through a crack
in a closet door.
life and death in Chinatown
The fish are slowly dying
in the big glass tank
at the Pearl River Seafood Restaurant.
The trick is to sell them
before they cross that fine line
between marketability
and the dumpster out back.
There are sea bass, grouper,
toad-fish and one long eel.
And there are Dungeness crabs,
still full of life,
as persistent as Sisyphus,
trying to climb the divider
between themselves and those
with the smell of death.
The bass kiss the glass
with angelic lips,
pleading with sad fish eyes.
They rise to the surface,
desperately gasping for oxygen,
only to sink again
onto the back of the eel.
The grouper cruise slowly
like medallion cabs,
while the toad-fish
rest indifferently
on the bottom.
I look up from my menu,
wondering which one
I should rescue.
Original Rays
Must have been the 60's
or early seventies
when the word got out
- the best pizza is Ray's.
Soon, all over the city,
pizza parlors put up signs
"Ray's Pizza",
until there were so many,
no one could remember
where the real Ray's really was.
Then came the proclamations,
"The Original Ray's",
till it came to the point where
there were at least a hundred
Original Rays in Manhattan,
and every loyal patron of any one
of these establishments would claim
that it was his favorite pizzeria
that was the authentic original.
And, of course, it's all so silly
because anyone with half-a-brain knows
the original Ray's Pizza
is on 6th Avenue near 12th Street.