How to get the most out of your jet lag

RIDING HOME FROM BRIGHTON BEACH

First we get drunk.
Then some mini-blinis.
The vodka (in a carafe!) was great.
It's June but deathly cold, fog wraps round the sea.
All seas are the same in the fog,
could be the Black Sea, say at Odessa.
Wraiths of Tchekovian silhouettes lining the boardwalk, old men barneying with each other.

I am grumpy
though the vodka cheers for a moment,
lifting the fringe of a curtain of an amazing world where nowhere is everywhere, where New
——— York is Odessa,
where nostalgia is not even on film.
We are the film.

But this is a country for old men
and I feel old 
in this cold.

Then we ride home to Greenpoint.
Back to Brooklyn, you say.
But we're in Brooklyn anyway, I say!
Brighton Beach is in Brooklyn.
First, you say, we have to go to Manhattan, to Sixth Avenue and catch the L train back to
————-Brooklyn.
It's as though we were trying to sew Brooklyn and Manhattan together.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.

I am grumpy. 
Of all the tall tales of the subway this is the longest.
"You weren't talking to me", you said.
Darling, I was talking to you;
I was talking to you from a distance with my back turned.

Didn't you hear me muttering,
like the little waves along the shore,
nibbling away at the hard flat sand?

Soon there'll be not just half a subway car between us,
but an ocean or a sky.
But that shouldn't take much longer than a ride from Brighton Beach to Greenpoint! I say.
Maybe it'll only cost one subway token!
You get mad at me.

Oh don't get mad! oh come next flight!
We'll stitch New York and Europe together.
Making one big garment of our lives.

And we'll dine at home.
I'll make you shrimp and yoghurt soup.
Yes, and we'll drink Russian vodka
and never go out-of-doors again.
We'll wrap ourselves up in a big blanket
stitched out of all the cities of the world
and settle down.

——————————-

MY HONEYMOON WITH MYSELF

Under the stars of Naples
Alone at last!
In the hotel I booked the queen-sized matrimonial suite.

Friends and family gave me a great sendoff.
My aged mother, tears in her eyes, waving goodbye:

"I'm glad to see you finally settled.
You weren't exactly the easiest person to live with."

"Great, mother", I say, "finally I've found someone you really approve."

Yet after all the excitement I don't know what to think.
Is it love that I feel?
or did I just talk myself into it?
Won't I get bored?

And, indeed, next morning at breakfast in the hotel dining room 
the atmosphere is a little subdued,

Everybody smiles at they look at me.
What must they be thinking?

Suddenly I'm a stranger, even to myself.

I look at myself, my downcast eyes.
Will conversation always be this hard?
And I wonder:
did I make the right choice?
Will I make myself happy?

Should I have spent more time surveying the field?

But as the mist lifts from the sea,
like a curtain opening on distant islands,
perhaps there is hope.

A stroll along the cliffs might cheer my spirits.

Still the nagging doubt:
I wasn't quite sure if I was a virgin.