WITHOUT DANGER

There is something to be said about dying early
with some teeth left in your head, heart,
maybe soul.
Before the style, the risks,
and the ventriloquist,
who shucked pain like so many vibrant husks,
sheds you, too. Memories are saccharine; letters,
humbled by twenty years, are yellowed signposts
of genital decay, signaling fear...and worse:
obedience.
Without bluff, without balls, without danger
is defeat.
Boring, moronic, mind-numbing
day to day capitulation to instinct leashed
like a trained seal waiting
to get fed.

ARF, ARF, ARF.



Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 1997