SOMEBODY HAD TO LIVE THIS LIFE

Were you gonna do it?
Were you?
Or you?
Or you?
No
you weren't.
It was up to me
to draw
to an inside straight
& get my parents
& get their crazy lineage
& language & cultivate their
sperm & eggs & zygote & shit
& get waylaid, side swiped
with a naive but monstrous
sentimental emotional stupidity
nurturing a sugar fear,
a people fear a crowd fear, a fear
of self & sustainability
in a home of sickness & sustenance.

Raise your hand
if you want diabetes & dope,
institutions & dangling
from the puppet strings
of failure.

I didn't think so.

But how about
if I threw in Bird
& Billie
& Bach
& Beethoven
& Bukowski?
And I'm not even
out of the"B's" yet.
How about Beckett
& bowling
& black beauties,
& Brahms?

How about Coeds
from Harvard
& Bennington
who play
the piano
& know your
secrets better
than you do?
How about Coney Island
when it was Coney Island?

Nobody becomes
who they are
until they live
who they are.
And if they
don't do it
who the fuck
will?

Like you
reading this
now. What
will you do?
Stand pat
or make
a move?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

BREAKING OUR MAIDENS

Take all your plans,
all your schemes,
your handicapping,
take all your "sure bets,"
"locks,"
your systems,
your "definite s,"
your "absolutes,"
"no doubt about it,"
all your "don't worry,"
your "trust me, it's in,"
& shove them
right up
your darkened
bunghole.

Noir or rouge
could come up
a million times
in a row
or never,
you might roll
nothing but sevens
or seven out
before a point
is made.
Drawing
to an inside straight
might or might not
get filled
without rhyme
or reason
no matter
how much
you're able
to count.

Some are born
sucking
on enormous breasts
filled with sweetness
through endless nights
while others suck
an empty pouch
and get bounced
around liquored
lovers screaming
holiness & murder.

Each time
we do something
we break
our maidens.
Each race
is the first
we've run.
Tomorrow
might be the day
you get up
and find blood
in your stool,
or step on a President
on your way to work.

Nothing has worked
for me
the way I thought
it would
or should.
And even though
I've had my share
of good fortune,
especially with women,
I've not been that fortunate
with machinery, money,
or health.

If I get up there
and sit at the feet
of the gods
I'd ask them why
they've kept me
in this crap game
for as long as they have?
I'm guessin they'd shake their heads
& say: "We don't have a fuckin clue;
we really don't."

And that,
as they say,
is that.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014