It's been one full week now
I've suffered amnesia.
Strangers step up to me on crowded corners
and call me by name.
  "Can we talk?"

So much of what we call luck
is caught up in the periphery
more so than from Nosy Parkers
who are by-products of deception
  in this unfortunate sunlight.

On clear bright afternoons
one can hear the hiss
of the sun's surface crackling
solar flares erupting like jazz music
  jerking arcs of orange-white plasma.

I was approached at the Cafe' Domingo
over a plate of sausage and eggs
sunny side up
their yoke oozing into my toast.
  "I have mastered the art of diffusing obsession."

The voice came from behind.
I felt the gentle pressure of a hand,
held as lightly on my shoulder as sunshine
grazing skin.
  Then a push-me-pull-you peck of a kiss on my cheek.

He left abruptly, pulling his beret down one side
as dappled light filtered through sidewalk trees
illuminating his stride I imagined him
on his haunches changing history. 
  The course of civilization capsulized

in shrines to loved ones erected
atop hotel dressers memory's torch
and torture's song. It's a jazz-blues rendition
that floats with the incense 
  with the syncopated rhythm of cicadas 

his ambling gate draws critchety along
asking, asking, questioning,
"Who are you to be so all alone?"
My mind mesmerized by the insects' drone,
  suffers endless streaks of smoky light.

Forgetting five-hundred fifty-four times.
Five Five Five.