Breakfast with Frank

  It’s not quite snowing when eggwhites
  enter from the diamond window door
  and Grade A Fancy whipped cream 
  confidence and stainless steel shine 
  aren’t enough to unsmudge my ruminations: 
  Do only women have legs on TV?
  Do the French know about the toast 
  they left at the next table? Do the Greeks 
  behind the counter know where 
  they hid the Parthenon key?  
  
  Outside, everyone seems to have a direction, 
  no one pauses to absorb the squeaky clean 
  House of Lever, maybe they’re already 
  thinking about what’s for lunch. Not
  
  me, I’m still at the Stone last night,
  nerves twitching on John Zorn’s vibrato
  fat and wide like a melancholy duck
  stuttering to work in camouflage pants
  a long-necked matzo ball solo on 
  a turkey bacon flight to the last westbound 
  whiskey bar in Hell’s Kitchen deep in 
  the stacks at the Strand Bookstore somewhere
  between History and Philosophy when 
  time crystalised and you were there.
  
  Then a guy sits down at the counter
  and looks just like any other guy, 
  no one even notices that he looks 
  the same as the guy who just left.