Thursday, November 25, 2010

THANK YOU...

for helping me
get laid
more often
than I had any right to:
Thank you
Smokey,
and Sam,
Marvin, Mary and
Curtis;
thank you
Shirelles, Marvelettes,
and Chiffons;
thanks folks
for helping
create the heat
the words
the whispers
when I was just feeling
my way along; trying
to just somehow touch a tit;
allowing my fingers
to snap
and unlock
a clasp or two.
Thank you Billie,
and Bud and Bird and Miles and Monk
and Dinah and Nina and Sarah
and T.S. and J. Alfred and crazy Ezra,
and Freddy N. and Immanuel the K,
and K as in Franz, and Coney Island
and Greenwich Village and times
of left handedness and black stockings
and no bras no brains no problem;
thank you Lenny
and Mort and George and Rich
for opening up
many a lady
through a laugh;
thank you Bobby D,
and Allen and Roi,
and Buk and Mark B. and Fran L and Skaggs,
and Phil and Toni.
Thank you
for giving me parts of you
that you didn't know
you'd given me
and,
after digestion,
was me
to them.
You made it easier
for me
to sucker punch
them
while singing
all these
beautiful songs
which became
my song.

And, for all
of the above you also get
a heartfelt and hardy:
FUCK YOU,
too.
Don't look so surprised--
you know exactly
what I mean.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2010

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

FEEDING THE PIGEONS

It is early
November: a damp, cold
and blustery day; a Dickensian zero
in the bones.
I push away
disgusted
from what is probably my last
dead-end job
and go down
for a smoke.
Park Ave South
looks as miserable and dirty
as a Rio favilla
without the humor
or violence.
My life
is 63 years spent
and fleeting fast
into the absence
of all desire:
sugar has eaten
parts of me
whole
for half a century:
my toes swim
with the fish';
a pump rewired with cat guts
and twine;
all my women,
young and old,
have smartened up;
my friends my few friends,
have died or simply
vanished or
have troubles of their own.
I stand,
or almost stand,
leaning against a pillar,
pull a fresh deck of smokes
out of my breast
pocket and before
smoke can reach my West Virginia lungs
the pigeons begin
to gather: black pigeons
and white pigeons, brown pigeons,
and gray pigeons, one-legged pigeons,
broken-winged pigeons, deranged pigeons,
nervous pigeons, dirty pigeons, and desperate
pigeons: rats without tails.
I know each of them
well. I, too, have lived like a tailless rat; born into
it, nurtured by it, held fast to its insane breast,
lived with it, guzzled it, in cells, in rooms
of daily rent, in my specially fashioned fence.
I've got by by luck
and instinct
and a curious
inquisition.
A security guard
comes out
to protect me.
He chases away
the ones who were slow
to get fed.
He looks at me.
I smile
and offer him
a cigarette.
He needs
to get out
of this world
quickly.
I know
the impossibility
and foolishness
of that for now
as I inhale
breathe out
and marvel
how good it feels
to be
alone.

Norman Savage
New York City, 2010