MY BLOCK

used to be hot:
Dylan Thomas drank himself
into St. Vincent's;
Delmore Schwartz
dreamt himself into suicide;
Eleanor Roosevelt funneled
her tits into a D cup
& her lesbian lovers;
Melville & Twain & Poe
scraped horseshit from their boots
& ambled and rambled about America
& God & sea journeys;
Pollock & deKooning
had fist fights
over brush strokes & pussy,
while Rothko thought of black
colors & early death while Klein
the black & white firmnament.

Now...
there are bankers
& banks...& kids
who still smell of piss
& freshly minted credit cards.
You,
or your parents,
have to be rich--
7 dollar ice teas,
& 15 dollar a pound laundries
demand no less.
"Art" is no longer a subject
but a laugh.
And I
can't get
a hardon
over much,
much less
poems
like this.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

TD BANK

was having a Grand Opening
directly opposite my pad.
They were trying to attract
suckers from the other banks
in the neighborhood by giving away
pens, keychains, assholes,
dixie cups of coffee, bite-size muffins,
charred pretzels and other processed nibbles.
Neighborhood putzes blinded
by their colors of stark green & white
milled about among as many managers
as were wanderers; you might think
they were discounting money, but,
of course, they weren't.
Their staff of eight dollar an hour
workers worked the street.

One other thing they were giving away:
NOISE. MORE FUCKING NOISE
in a city
that's one long siren
to begin with.
It began vibrating
my apartment at nine-thirty
in the morning; a blast
of reggae
coming from speakers
opposite my bedroom
windows
and shouts
from the only people
awake enough to hear:
those working
for the bank.
At noon I went down
& walked across the street
to some men in dark-colored suits,
white shirts, striped ties,
gleaming black shoes.
I approached two of em:
you work for this entity? I asked.
Proudly, the Canadians answered, "Yes, we do."
(I knew they were Canadians because they looked polite
and fucked-up their "O's" and wore, aside from the uniform,
banking smiles).
You know who Bob Marley was? Yellowman? The Wailers?
They looked at each other. Confused. Losing their smiles.
They wanted to burn you cocksuckers down,
and they should have, I told them.

They looked toward some burly black men
they'd hired for security--not Canadian.
All their eyes
never left
my back
as I retraced
my steps
to look
for my Saturday
as well.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014