JFK & ME

Coming up:
50th anniversary
of when the bullet
met the brain
of our beautiful
leader of
the free world.
America's machine
is milking it
for all it's worth.
Pundits and pimps
of posters and porn
are filling every
available orifice.
If you don't serve
their purposes
by knowing exactly
where you were
and how many tears
you shed
you feel like shit.
In fact,
you are shit
if you weren't frozen
with astonishment,
then grief,
when our handsome,
skirt chasing,
drug taking,
Camelot bullshitting
President was smoked.
Folks like Tom Brokaw
make a fortune
from our collective grief:
Where were you?
Were you in the middle
of farting?
taking a leak?
reading Hobbes?
or watching
a pair of nylons
disappear around
a corner?

Well, I know where
I was--
if any sonofabitch cares?
I was in Tommy's mother's Cadillac
outside Nathan's
eating a hotdog
trying to take a peak
down Tommy's mother's cleavage,
inhaling her perfume
while hoping
against hope
that I'd bowl well
in my high school's bowling match
she was driving us to.
The radio was on
to the news bulletins.
The Heart told her
to find some music.
She was all
for that.

I threw a 223, 227,
and a 204. I had
a very good
day.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013