The savage is what attracts me. That Jack London Call of the Wild thing. That dog would be me, just in from the wild, made good by a roof over his head. But not tame tame, as in civilian.
That's me if I were a female dog and god knows I am a female dog past ten o'clock. Wrap my bitch body in taught clothes and throw me up against the moist ribcage and see if I growl with my teeth bared.
No sense of security-that alter persona rips through the folds of wellness. Those mind/body bouquets to un-sensitize the ravages of one's DNA. I burst out coldly. Reactive and sharp.
Like the time when I was privy to someone's racism, this casual word that included me or else that sense of I am rich because I can afford a nanny or I can own an apartment I belong in the living room. Like the mother who said she'd be able to eventually get over it if her son were gay- or like the way my mother said I could just go to Tuscany-her house was empty.
What did this mean to me on 14th Street, walking up the subway platform, finding a dollar, reaching down, before I was pushed against from the walkers behind me? I have a dollar. I am free to buy a granola bar. Now I wonder what else that dollar would buy? Not the tight red-jeaned Indian hipster smoking and walking in stride, can he tell I can smell him? Or would the dollar buy me another smile from my father. Or how about a piece of lumber to burn for my own crucifixion. I could burn myself up in the 14 Street chimney pot hole and watch the Savage transcend into some alchemical sexual moist black smoke.
copyright paolinaweber 2010
