THE MOST DECENT ONES

in the sometimes sun
shrink from the owl
vigilance inside them;

all perception
is matched
by blindness
& a feeble groping
for meaning.

Blue smoke
from cigarettes
& urns; both
are lovely
in the stained glass
light staining
a vision, admittedly
delusional of eternity
and its weight;
or, perhaps,
you're in cramped rooms,
tethered to cubicles,
where you are now
reading this rising
or falling
to a made-up god's
heartbeat;

tires make that slick
sound ticktickticking
in the rain
while the metronome slap
of the wipers
fails to clear
the condensation
inside the windshield;
lazily, absentmindedly,
we brush against
a slowly moving landscape,
the colors runny
and muted,
the sounds muffled,
the screams gripping
the throat
caught and
stilled.

The body moves
despite your wishes
where it wants,
or has to go.
As the workers
released from their evening
hell take a breath
& release themselves
into another promise
unfulfilled. Some
determinedly walk
to their cars,
bus or train stops
going home
to another kind
of emptiness--sometimes wanted,
sometimes not and sometimes
to be brokered by cash
or circumstances; others
light a smoke & decide
on direction, some think
about a doctor's appointment
or baseball standings,
others a bath
and clean sheets and some
nothing at all.
Some are better
at living than others, & some
better at dying.
I've had a lot of practice
at both.
And you?
Tell me.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014