As sticky as syrup-soaked gruel

eyes closed with dreamy leftovers

eyes closed tightly as if seamstresses

sewed those viscous visions inward.

At times it’s like that … this reluctance

to greet a day’s reality using this excuse

or that excuse or playing blame game

on colder darker dawns or aging aches.

At last eyes open and outward bound

seeing every single human everywhere

as their newborn blank-slate selves

crying hungry sightless bloody needy.

At last eyes open and bound to see

every single human everywhere

as sooner-or-later life-expired husks

crying done hunger gone sightless still.

At last eyes open and bound to see

one’s mirrored self as nothingness

reflected from the moment before

the eternity before one’s conception.

Two young lovers see sky ablaze

one with blinding innocence

one with omissions lousy with lies.

Two young lovers but one secretly

in love with someone else someone

with whom tomorrow’s sunset

will be shared a continent away.

Two young lovers see sky ablaze

one buries cowardice in nuclear silo

as barn-burning sky bears witness.

High school dropout in the 30s

World War II combat veteran in the 40s

freight elevator operator in the 50s and beyond

same union job his first-generation father held

and in the same building too —

dusty grimy busy boring noisy quiet stuffy drafty

with assembly-line sweat shops on all ten floors

assembling stuffed toys and purses and corsets

and clocks and socks and shirts and sweaters

where he jokes with the men flirts with the women

and makes baseball bets with the truckers

and where in the basement at lunchtime

he eats a sandwich from the next-door deli

and feeds the sleek rat-catching black cat

and reads the Daily News and listens

to big-band music on his transistor radio.

Subway-plus-bus commute

totals two-plus hours roundtrip.

Saturday might be a half-day of overtime.

Only twenty-two years to retirement.