ON BEING AN OLD MAN (TENTATIVELY)

My child is dead
but, as yet,
he does not know it.
Alive,
he is projected across
the naked screen where
a magic lantern threw off
forms that knew not the boundaries
of flesh. It's my own lie
that prevents the occurance
and not without reason.
But that's my problem.

It should be the child,
not the gender,
that's important;
yet I can't help wanting the strong
Spartan male who's as old as Greece
and as young as a first reading is.
I find that hard to live with,
though not impossible.

My life is spent staring
into Times Square neon
and then,
once sufficiently blinded,
I try the Port Authority
to catch the next bus out;
it's silly
to try and do something like that.
I've not found
a comfortably narrow street
to walk down; either my shoes
scrape against the red protruding brick,
or the street opens
too quickly
giving way to the broadest of intersections.
There is only the misleading map
of intuition to assist,
only today,
with the huge hidden asterisk that says:
use once,
then,
throw away.

It is not so hard
to understand
beauty;
despite the urn
it doesn't exist
except
as contradiction.

I cannot make love
without seeing the other side.
My inability is with women.
Sparta is not that far.

Norman Savage
Coney Island, 1968