NOT BAD

Closing in
on 67
is most
astounding
for someone
who was dying
every third
second.
I began
nursing
a type of mania
since eleven
and tried
to push
towards the other side
of the grass
with aplomb,
style
and relish.
I was bad
at living
and worse
at dying--lucky
for me.

I've lived
in a beautiful
neighborhood
for four decades
& tripped
around it
for a decade more;
I've ate well,
smoked some excellent
smoke, excelled at a
controlled excursion
into other forms
of consciousness and
enjoyed a living death
that only heroin offers.
I've heard musicians live
that were alchemists
of sounds; knew painters
who now hang
in places that folks pay
to get into; and have
enjoyed women of every stripe
and persuasion; I've had
gravy's gravy...sweets
that dizzy the brain;
and enjoyed the kinds of lows
that had those black twerlies
dance inside my lids,
making my gut swollen
with pain.

Even this past year,
as exquisite
and agonizing
as it was,
opened ways
unexpected:
it confirmed
a humanity
both stupid
yet profound
which I've tried
in my infinite
grandiosity
to ignore.
But to know love
& loss
& love
again
is something
that will burnish
the one now
who's near
and that can't
be diminished
because it can't
be lost
by accident
or squandered
by chance.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014