Friends Never Friends
hey, let's make a day of it...
to visit dead grandmothers
cock-craving teens
the hasidim and drag queens
the bums of the bowery
the deserted dolls of alleys
the zucchini bread lady
the home-bound doctor
who once made
house-calls
now bound up
suddenly coming down
with a case of the social phobia
the husband trying to get rid of
wife and daughters puttting them
out on the lawn with fellow tchtchkas
the weathervanes and widow-watches
the bird on a wire eavesdropping
on extra-curricular phone calls
the crosses and the crows
the coyotes and stray dogs
the piano tuner indisposed
in his self-imposed seclusion
the curmudgeon and ex-convict
and clockmaker and coal miner
the kleptomaniac mothers
who feel betrayed and cheated
the timekeeper and housekeepers
the psychotropic pushers
the exhibitionists and projectionists
the perverts and perfectionists
the empty aimless businessmen
drifting to stray sleazy peepholes
some time during lunch hour
in the prime of their life
prime-rib to go
the elevator repairmen
and panhandlers
the exterminators
and window washers
the filthy-mouthed tug boat captains
and phantom tow brige operator
the dope addicts in boxcars
in trainyards under the stars
witht their bibles and birds-eye
peek-a-boo views of shattered
shipwrecked skylines
in the western night
the alcoholic painters
surviving off wine, suicide,
poor punchlines, prison,
side of rice and road kill
the dead-end kids of dusk
of ghosts of wilderness
the delinquents smoking
blunts trying to make little
to no sense of existence
by the railroad by the river
by the foghorns
by the phantoms
the ice fishermen
fishing for old friends,
family and acquaintances
for clues, for redemption
somewhere between hell and heaven
the cliff divers and contortionists
having entered a deep depression
feeling deserted and abandoned
when tourists leave them
in the off-season
the willing widow still in her beehive hairdo,
paint-by-number clothes, jigsaw puzzle bones,
content making her rounds to a gigolo husband
finally buried underground, washing it all down with a
bowl of borscht, bagels, fish eyes, and chopped liver on black bread,
lower east side sunsets, old grand dad, and beer straight from the keg.
