13,865. SMALL SATISFACTION

SMALL SATISFACTION

I keep waiting for the satisfaction

that's to come but it has never yet

arrived. Though time is the waiting,

I am still waiting for time. My name

is Alonzo Speedway?

-

There's nothing in the manners that

marks a marked man : I go to dinner

with outlandish people, and we sit

at tables to pay outlandish sums.

There are flowers in the salt glass,

and some stalwart woman keeps

winking at me.

-

I can't escape, in a manner of speaking,

my jailers, my kinfolk, my masters or

worse. Those who gather at the stone

gather only moss.

-

Credentials? Now you ask? Only so

late in the game? For so many years

I have bested you all, done my utmost

while nobody came. I had no assets,

nor fortune nor fame. My money was

such that a tollbooth would break me.

-

Some stupid crowd slightly murmurs,

and I catch a few words not worth

repeating or report. The chief oracle

has always been my medicine man,

reading sticks on the ground or the

bladders of ewes; always to my disdain,

He never foretold any future. I waited

archly while his tongue froze in time.

-

Ed Koch, Meyer Lansky, Alex Fortunato,

all those chumps beat me to the grave.

They can have it for now; there's but

one life to save.