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SURVIVING GRACE (excerpt)
*Only the title comes from a play by
Trish Vradenburg, Surviving Grace.
I
have survived your grace,
Possibly existent God.
I have survived brain surgery,
Falling off a Himalayan cliff,
Nearly being shot in Turkey,
And many, many epileptic seizures.
But what I can’t understand, 0 possibility,
Is why there are so many stupid, little
Rich people with secondrate dreams
Running around New York City now.
I hold you partially responsible for them,
Even though I don’t really know you’re there
And I suspect you don’t care.
You just produce them like sausages, daily
And accept neither responsibility nor accountability
For the quality of the life you produce.
I suspect you aren’t even listening as I scream
After decades of trying to love all sentient beings
That so much of your progeny has proven intolerable.
Oh God, maybe it’s time to unleash that black hole.
On us all
And start all over again.
LATER
How
many cockroaches died
In the World Trade Center disaster?
Would I have killed them
Had they been born in my kitchen
Rather than in higher but
More dangerous dwellings?
What about the rats?
Were there any in such
Well-guarded, upscale buildings?
If rats perished, too,
I can’t mourn them, I’m afraid,
Not even the husbands
Who may have been wife-abusers
Or partner-haters. Alas,
I can’t love all sentient beings
Even today, eight months
After the towers briefly became
The strangest lighthouses
Anyone has ever seen.
Nevertheless, just to show
I’m not a complete species elitist,
I feel the rats and cockroaches
Who perished without being
Memorialized as heroes,
Should be mentioned here
If only because they have no
Living relatives to voice
Their claim for herohood.
They just happened to be
In the wrong buildings at
The wrong time and make no
Claims to nobility based
On a new, misdefinition
Of heroics. Thus, may these
Humble beings who also died
Be born to better lives next time
Around, possibly leaving New York
With twice as few of their kind
Of animal or insect, something
Which would amount to a positive
Contribution out of a horrific
Disaster which still plagues
The minds of most New Yorkers
Who lived within the affected area
Of downtown Manhattan.
Tom Savage has written many books, seven of which have
been published. These include, most recently, Brain
Surgery Poems (Linear Arts Book, 1999) and Political
Conditions/Physical States (United Artists Books,
1993). His poems have been published in The New York
Times, The World, Hanging Loose, Talisman, Long Shot,
and many other periodicals. He has taught a workshop
at The Poetry Project, a poetry master class at the
Julliard School, and currently teaches a workshop at
Encore Community Center, a senior citizens center
which is part of St. Malachy's Church, the "actor's
chapel." He edited the magazine Tamarind for nine
years. In the mid-nineteen-eighties he edited the
magazine Gandhabba. He has received two grants from
the Fund for Poetry.
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