A DISMAL END TO AN ASHEN YEAR, 2015

This town has no juice.
There isn't a buzz, not
a hum; it's leaden like
death. A pallor of gray
ash. Broadway is dim;
a yellow wattage darkens
the streets. Children
are dragged into toy stores.
The Salvation Army plays
Wagner on their bells.

Perhaps, it's Paris
or San Bernardino,
Chicago or The West
Bank or The Congress
or The President
who looks like
he hasn't gotten pussy
in years; tired
from the prom
from the promise
from what is
not? Perhaps,
it's constantly looking
for sales and bargains
because there are no
sales or bargains--
everything costs more
than what they're worth?
A collective reckoning.
A hundred and forty characters...
and you're dead.
An attention span of fleas.

I've gotten emails,
but no Christmas cards;
I've sent out emails,
but haven't licked a stamp.
It is company without flesh;
sentiment without breath.

I'm sure many people feel differently.
There will be champagne flutes aplenty
aloft in The Hamptons & Fifth Avenue
& Sutton Place come the thirty-first.
Some men will suckle an enormous breast
while thousands more are jailed
like a household pet through endless nights.
Those are not the ones I mean.
It's the fat middle that keeps getting fatter
that feasts on the offal that spins
off the techno butcher house of synthetics
that pawns itself off as real meat
that plays with me.
More people
have less;
more people
have less;
more people
have less;
and less people
have more
and more
and more.
"Will the machine gunners
please step forward."

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015