CONEY ISLAND BABY

This poem is A's...

"If they had no madness in them, they were useless; genius doesn't speak with the limited tongue of sense."
--C.E. Morgan

A nitrous oxide summer.
Slick & honeyed mouths
of cotton candy, girl pink
& fushcia, yellows/blues/reds,
candy apples caramel thick
on gooey sticks; pavement
suction cupping sneakers;
a hiss of franks
charring & popping juices;
sweet salt twisting
nipples & noses.
Rats, in the moist sand,
sticking their whiskers
into bags of Nathan's fries.

I was traveling
into a dark wood,
around the arms
of sailors
& their girls,
crisscrossing a huckster's moan
inviting bravery born
in a man's bone
& the pitch of nickels & quarters--
an alchemist's delight
in life's chances
& chances taken--
hyped-up & erect
against the steely teeth
of zippers.

Night is not dark,
but forgiving.
Boardwalks are lenient.
Songs are simple
laments of longing.
Each wave,
a sensation
brokered
by a semicolon.
I was lost
& still am.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016