the buttercup grill & bar couplets

some places are so retro they might be mistaken for trendy
in grease with menu so ancient one can order a plate of calf liver

grilled it says so to perfection or purr like a feline
where the average age was tipped just under ancient

a place where depends adult daipers and breathing apparatuses
multiply like the rotting corpses of the morti viventi

it happened eating here i found my double only much older
i think much older just the same wore his white hair like mine

thick black clunky glasses same build even same shirt down
to the pattern he was so serious quiet studious like a monk

in his cell but seriously funny the muzak called for solemnity
and a plain expression that i couldn't hack no more

it was anna who brought our twinned lives to my attention
when she whispered to me that i was him or him me

maybe bukowski or ginsberg could've made something out
of it but for all i could do was suppress an urge to laugh

and say yeah i could see me in a few decades eating
in a booth beside a wall of peeling paint

writing poems to the beat of muzak
digging every minute of it

with or without companion
staring into space too sober to be so stoned