WHY I'M HERE

is obviously not
what I thought.
It's not to get
my way, but to
find a way;
it's not to stroke
an inflamed
and engorged
flabby ego,
but to leash it
to reason; it's not
to get my cock sucked
with whomever however
I choose and not to offer
my arm to the blind
& crippled at crossings.
It's not to sing
praises to the Lord
or His parasites or care
if Mother Mary gives a fuck
over what I'm doing or done.
It might be to listen
to Coltrane conducting
a Latin Mass or marry
words or wonder
why the Blackbird
is hungry today?
It might be to breathe
heroin fumes off concrete
in the Bronx or rub
an amputee's stumps?
It might be
to have dinner
with Puma
& talk baseball
and loves stranded
on third?
These are all legitimate
concerns.
Certainty
is for the dispossessed
who know
they need to eat
or pee.
Those,
like myself,
who have the luxury
of play, can be artists
of cowardice--like
wondering where
all that living goes
when it stops.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017