Tom SAVAGE

Duration

Is your life a one-act
Or a full-length breath?
New York is the new Paris,
Late 19th or early 20th century,
Take your pick. It helps
To get away from time, often.
You always return a little calmer.
When the sea rustles its papers,
Does memory remain?
When the sky walks
Will the clouds save you a seat?
Our spyglasses in the sky remind us
No one "dies" of "love" anymore.
Often I don't recognize my own voice
When I hear it played back
Either by my brain or by machine.
If I could see my own thoughts
Would I no longer need to hear them?
Every rock knows artifice.
Each womb knows we've lived
Before we were born.
So far all I've known is different;
Preferrable to difficult, I suppose.
How many necklaces can you wear at once
Before you choke?
Is this determined by climate
Or by the time of day?
The irreplacable sky dies
Or disappears behind too many buildings.
The silences between words
Demand to be heard
As much as the meanings between them.
But they never are. Near or far.







Son of the Forgotten Adam

Blue skinned men
Old Celts or Pagans
Take a bath in the present day
A gift to no one
But the dead
Who can't claim
Or reclaim it
From where they lie.
Some have a blue skin
When seen naked
Floating in water.
Death is lusty
In the dark
For you.
When a storm
Reaches Hell,
We're reminded,
Many ghosts
Don't know how to swim.
Everything changes there
But us.
Rough sex is
The only form of
Violence allowed.
When death goes away,
We cry.
But another one
Arises and falls soon.
When time slows down here,
We can speed it up
Only for short stretches.

Here Adam is forced
To live alone forever.
Here, an old typewriter
Floats on the sun
Until weighed down
With too many words.
It sinks
And finds its last
Salvation in silence.
Hell has no future
Except for investors.
Death both is
And is not reversible.
Once a month
We eat loneliness
For dinner.
If we dug ourselves out,
Would we find our
New lives as ghosts in China?
Coincidence is
Our ethics here.








The Chesters

Is there anything sadder
Than a mere ex-star
In our celebrity-addled epoch?
Chester Morris, once
A famous, romantic lead
And also a tough guy
In Thirties Hollywood movies
Meets Chester Himes
In, surprisingly or not,
Chester, Pennsylvania.
Should who defer to whom?
Were Chester A. Arthur,
Our most forgotten president,
To suddenly rearise from the grace,
He could be reforgotten
Or learn how to forget
All over again, again.









Yes, And/Or No

Alphabetical action or food.
A well-lit corridor, for once.
Expressed or extreme milk.
An abstract expressionist poem
Would be an open field; no cows please.
Your troubles might seem like Heaven to me.
Candor in verse or worse.
This train left but you're still here.
Our set is in some distant future.
Objectivity, as a point of view.
Let your life's work be your life.
Our dead are no longer sad.
Even in our dreams, they laugh.
They'd rather sing than speak.
Your potter makes ceramics for Hell
But Heaven takes them in its stead.
Someone invented zero,
Realized his or her mistake,
And tried to go back beyond his
Or her construction.
But it was too late.
Anything could have been undone
But that one, that zero,
The negative handkerchief of fate.
A rarefied thing hovered after the treatment,
A boast, a toast, a termination, and a jest.
You'll be seen by your own blossom
And some clouds.
A poem can be in any meter,
Even none.
It may be that grace falls or rises
From us rather than
From any other direction around.
Embrace the inanimate objects inside you.







back