Monday, December 24, 2012

I'M SUPPOSED TO BE FUCKED-UP

but I'm not
as I sit down
to write
on this
the sixty-fifth Christmas Eve
of my lifetime.
I've written
often enough
about the pain,
silliness, self
pitying uselessness
of it all
with all my defenses
honed and sharpened
depending on what year
it was and who
was listening.
But not this year.
This year I feel
rather well:
I'm loved
by a woman,
a musical luscious babe
who lives
in Mexico
and inside
my head,
who I think
I could love
if I let myself;
I'm loved
by a crazy brother
who I met again
after a storm
tossed me against
his door;
words still dance
and spark, igniting
fires in my brain--
and even though
they are brush fires,
they still, if briefly,
heat the inner landscape;
even my job,
which robs
my time
and steals my fantasies,
provides the four walls
that make it all
possible.

The odds were against
this poem
ever being written.
But odds never meant
shit to me. For me,
waking up was
the nightmare.
Yet I've learned
how to compound
and paint the chipped,
cracked, and open holes
in my soul
and was lucky
to have some hand-holding
along the way
by educated fingers.

Lately,
I've put away
some of the guns.
Others remain
loaded
and at the ready,
I know.
There are some,
I know,
who don't want to hear that.
Let some of those take heart:
misery never ceases.
But the opening of the cage
has widened
just a bit
as has my willingness
to walk
through it
at times.

Breathing
comes before
bravery.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2012

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