MY BLOCK

used to be hot:
Dylan Thomas drank himself
into St. Vincent's;
Delmore Schwartz
dreamt himself into suicide;
Eleanor Roosevelt funneled
her tits into a D cup
& her lesbian lovers;
Melville & Twain & Poe
scraped horseshit from their boots
& ambled and rambled about America
& God & sea journeys;
Pollock & deKooning
had fist fights
over brush strokes & pussy,
while Rothko thought of black
colors & early death while Klein
the black & white firmnament.

Now...
there are bankers
& banks...& kids
who still smell of piss
& freshly minted credit cards.
You,
or your parents,
have to be rich--
7 dollar ice teas,
& 15 dollar a pound laundries
demand no less.
"Art" is no longer a subject
but a laugh.
And I
can't get
a hardon
over much,
much less
poems
like this.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018