2017 NEEDN'T HURRY ON MY ACCOUNT

Soon enough
I'll be shrunken
& bloodless...
or ash--
if I get lucky.
Better people than I
have made the journey.
I'm Ozymandias's
orphaned son
up to my balls
in sand: blank,
pitiless, lost
as I make my way
to the Bronx today
for a workshop
for jailbirds.

But at the stroke
of midnight
the raven will flutter
off Edgar's shoulder;
virginities will fall;
some will bleed,
others have bled,
amateurs will vomit
amid the horns, the revelers
the merry-makers; empires
will give themselves over
to shadows; girls will weep
& boys will whoop
their manhood to fathers
who are no longer there,
who followed their inner defaults:
money or fame or power.

And I'll be watching
it all play out.
I'll be with Ralph
& Alice & Norton & Trixie
in a Brooklyn tenement
in Bensonhurst.
Time does not age.
It clicks
endlessly.
Might as well
have a laugh.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016