*BLIND DATE

I sit down at the bar and light up an English Oval.

When you cough and spit at the smoke,

I suspect I'm not going to get laid.

"Three packs a day," I fib.

"I also drink 26 cups of coffee before work

and eat white sugar straight from the box."

I want to go home right then,

but you are looking awfully cute sipping on that

caffeine-free Diet 7-Up

in your jogging shorts and Nike sneakers,

so I order a Stoly martini straight up and admit

I lied

about the sugar.

You laugh and point out a couple eating dinner.

He is wearing a bad toupee and a Walkman.

She is reading Cosmo.

We joke about the things people do

to push each other away as you

eye the door.

   "I haven't been laid in five years," I whine,

blowing a smoke ring when you tug at your muscle T-shirt,

complaining you need sleep.

It is 7 p.m.

   "I haven't been laid in FIFTEEN years,"

I wail to your disappearing Nike sneakers.

   "Nice girl," gushes the bartender later,

   "but I couldn't make any time with her."

I exhale smoke out my nose dramatically

and gulp down a couple packets of white sugar.

   "Me neither,"

 I snort.

*First published in Common Lives and included in Ladies and Gentlemen: the Hudson Pier Poets, an anthology of (mostly) New York poets available from Eggplant Press.

http://chocolatewaters.com/order/#Ladies%20and

*TRANSFORMATION
(on the departure of Scruff-o the Wonder Cat)

My grief spills out upon the earth,
as endless as the journey of the Fool.
Of all the doubts that I have had
since leaping off the cliff that was my life.
Of all the deaths that I've been through
since landing in New York with just a suitcase
and my Scruff-o cat beside me -
No single one has broken my determination
to become my best of selves,
like Scruff-o's death has cracked my walking stick in two.
Not the loss of all my lovers and my friends,
not the loss of the city that harbored me a decade,
or the loss of Humor, my muse,
or the sidewalk sales of my possessions,
or the theft of all my jewels.
So why should the death of this old scruffy cat
turn my eyes into mountains
and my heart into the thistle of a rose?
Because for seven years he loved me.
That's all.
And I loved him back.
And with his death he told me:
Sever your connections with the limitations of the self.
Sever your connections with the past.
Then soar
              into the moment
                                     like a fool.

*First published in Sing! Heavenly Muse and available on the CD, "Chocolate Waters Uncensored."

http://chocolatewaters.com/cd.html