I.
Sweet summertime
of New York’s empty city
The taller the tower
the hazier the cloud
Ring around my raspberry flavored mind,
devoured
The shape of an egg
reminds me what we like to see
In New York the vinegar is wine
In New York there is only fruit and labor
The bread comes as quickly as they can bake it up
comes as quickly as is, goes
At 1 a.m. I get home
and wonder how I got here.
II.
Sherried prune, salted caramel
I create for you
A masterpiece that words speak and no one ever tastes
Star tipped campground
Delight, magical inverted
Question of timing, precise
At the moment of slicing
A seasoning that is fascinating
But hardly a well kept
Miracle
A burnt egg is meringue
Of a sort that pleases the eye,
And no one complains.
III.
Marc says he’s going to make a raspberry soufflé for the menu
Build your napoleon with the neat edged needles
Push saucing sauce around the plate
Push broadly
Eliminate the chaos of the misdirected
Lines on a plane
Where no shadows
Fall and one shape is the other of the color
Scoop the fruit and sugar
Down around the clowning fruit, papaya pineapple kiwi and
Textured shore of pecan pebbles
Caramel glazed miroir mountain
IV.
Doesn’t even look like a strawberry,
And the perspective is all off on the
Mint leaf. A canyon is created from
The photo’s snapping shutter all the while,
Canyon snaps and creaks crumbs, but none tumble.
No crumbs on the plate and no resistance
From us or for the photographic eye,
But perspective is all off, cream is sharp
The plate so stiff, so expensive I can
See my future in it, a reflection
Breakaway flashes on the station’s steel
Lighting set for actors of a scriptless
Sensationalism, I see you now,
Offer you a peach that tastes like gold.
*****
Love Poem for Jacek at the mangia bakery
Jacek bends a knee and crouches toward the mixing bowl
Of a 60 quart
Fluorescent
Bulb, warehouse
that he painted himself, floor to ceiling yellow, color of butter
Story of sugar
Covering the mixer
And the floor, where, his knee leans and he folds
Eggwhites
Armpit deep in sweets
That early morning coffee don’t even cut,
By the time you get out of work here you can’t even remember how you got here
It was the train,
But it was so dark it was daylight-less dawn
How can so many people wake up and come straight
To Wall St.? To clean up, to fasten, to check, to bake
To measure, to cut, to scrape
To end tired, and happy, in the middle of the day. The day changes
into a different thing, has a different form, and
Sweets
Don’t taste anymore
And everyone works faster and faster when the music comes around again
Techno bakery, means to an end, and
How does anyone speak to anyone else this early, and
How does anyone see where they are going, next week I’ll stay out all night and stumble here straightaways,
See Jacek, Polish, good humored, young heart, old face, buttery arm
Rosy cheeked
White pants, paper hat, 4:30am.
