Lucid dreaming, I sit
                      in a downtown lounge,
swirling ice in my drink, listening
to tiny 'bergs creaking and cracking.
                                                       ­                   I raise the glass to my lips and
             imagine the taste of Shackleton's whisky, after those
100 years in Antarctic ice, assimilating a tinge of penguin, a pinch of
blubber, the turbulence of the sea, the still of the frozen mountains across the tundra, the desolation, the tenacity of survival, the bitter numbing cold, mixed in with
                                                   the warm peaty oaken goodness of Scotland at the other end
of the world.

Through the soles of my boots I sense the  
thin surface tension keeping my body, the table and chairs
from plunging into the frozen deep that
lurks somewhere beneath the Lower East Side, black and still,
       waiting
             waiting.

The band starts up in the
     next room.
A curtain parts and a blast of brass escapes,  a great honking
      sound that
reverberates in a molar,
before
    a female voice lifts me from my chair, drawing me toward
the source.
                     Pushing across the floor like Nureyev on ice, I slide deftly between amorous
couples, skirt the co-ed queue at the toilets, dodge the woman at the curtain collecting the cover charge, nod at my pal the bouncer returning to his post and finally
glide/float/fly through the velvet drapery,
                                                        ­                           focused on the rising soprano.

                              It's just a dream, I think. Why pay cover?

*Ode to the Living Room