Off the Hook
I walk in, sit down,
order an American beer
with an imported name, finger-scan
a dilapidated old menu, slobber
over a half-pound cheese steak
that I won't order; I shoot a killer's glare
at some raucous, drunk baboon
flying too far into my airspace;
I watch the tail-end of another
fourth-quarter collapse
by the New York Knickerbockers.
With the domestic-import
in hand, my eyes
back in their sockets,
and a renewed cynicism
in New York's finest
(New York's only),
I turn on my stool.
Looking through a picture window
past Highlands' skirt I see the Hook: vitality
in the dead of night: its shores are salivating
hungrily, though not, I'd guess,
for cheese steaks; a bonfire on the skin-beach
pulses in the sightless night: the pulmonary pumping
of the heart of the Hook; I imagine
I hear the apnoeic sleep-sigh of the surf.
I come to port here,
off the Hook, its shimmering
beach heads reflecting the Harvest Moon
like "Help Me" beacons on desert islands,
and this is ironic because I feel like
I am the one being rescued.
