GETTING ANOTHER SHOT AT IT

Yesterday I had my fingerprints taken.
Human Resources will call me
sometime after the first
to give me a start date.
I don't know why
the gods have been so good to me:
jobs, women &, at times
Tennessee's strangers.
Most jobs & women I fucked up
while some fucked me up; why
the brass ring has come round
again--I don't know.

In fact, "why?" anything
I don't know.

But come January
I'll be going
to the Bronx
where I've only been
a few times before:
the old stadium
when the NY Giants
played in NY
& The Yanks
who built it;
the other times
I snuck in & out
to some south Bronx shit hole
to cop heroin when Fox
& Simpson Streets where known
as Ft. Apache.

I'll try to do
what I've done well before:
help some poor sonofabitch
and their family cope
with a bad hand
they were dealt
way before they knew
they were even in
a poker game.
I feel good
about that.
I think I can
do it
without trampling
on their ego
or succumbing
to my own.
Humility happened
grudgingly: my life
got ugly. No longer
was I a catch;
I was the caught.

But I got lucky:
some went to bat
for me. I owe it
to them to get up
to the plate
& not try
to hit it
out of the park,
but only try
to make
contact.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

LITTLE DO WE KNOW--

we know so little.
We like to think
we're so expansive,
so all inclusive,
so all encompassing
and not so
full of shit.
Our nature
is to defy
nature
not because we can
but because we must--
not as smart as the slug,
the worm the simple
solitary unit.
We are not the end
but the end product
of this evolutionary
mambo. Less equipped
than our bettors
to groove with a music
of being
& being done to
by laws
we dance to, not with.

The Dolphin
should be the God
we worship
instead of eating--
a crime that will--
little do we know--
be punishable
by death...which
is coming
soon
to a theater
near you.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015