Thursday, May 30, 2013

WORDS

like youth
will, one day,
wake-up
and take-off
for greener pastures.
You'll try to run
after them
and trip
on a memory
or two.
One thing
I can promise:
your transition
will be made
in your sleep.

Better
watch
your
step.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

Saturday, May 25, 2013

MY LITTLE BABY

The Betty Poems

started work yesterday
after being holed-up
in bed
in a fetal position
sucking on a bottle
for the past year.
She's smart,
beautiful,
and crazy--
much like
the best fucks are.
It seems
I attract
those kinds.
I've lived
an interesting life.

I wanted to call her,
see how it went,
congratulate
her courage,
a moment of triumph
in a world of defeats
for even getting out of bed
after fifty-two years
of kicking the shit
out of herself
and other enemies.
But I didn't.
I know
that most of us
need a lover--
more than a family
more than a friend
more than a god
--to do that.
She'd never ask,
and I'd never offer.
We'd just had a fight--
one of many--
fuck you
fuck you
and fuck you.
Each of us
too proud
and stupid
and determined
to protect
our acre
of hell.

Love
and hate
are mad hot;
they crackle
across the space
of two pillows
or through those merciless wires
and immediate ether world
of space between Toronto
and New York City
as close
as breath;
once evidence
is gathered
it bludgeons
the best
of us.

Living
is so very difficult
and loving
through the forests
of deception and pain
so impossibly
important.
I've yet
to learn
how.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

HIT & MISS


A lot of words--
over fifty years worth
of putting one word
next to another
--was bad
writing.
Either I was too young,
or too drunk,
or too drug addled,
or too stupid,
to do a better job; but
some of it
hit the mark.

All of it,
however,
was wasted.

And only some of you
will understand
that.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

Sunday, May 5, 2013

HISTORY MAKES FOOLS OF US ALL

The Betty Poems

when you really get down to it:
what you thought
were great: like the words
from the pens of masters
who spun profundities
like so much cotton-candy
sticking to the sugar starved
spaces in your head,
are not so
very great.
and the dynasties that have risen
claiming a hold on the imaginations
of dreamers and future conquerers
have been sullied and vanquished
like those female beauties
who struggled too much
with lipstick and high heels;
our fantasies quickly
wilted
leaving only memories
to be chewed, gnawed,
and spit out.

Andy's fifteen minutes
have been reduced
to nanoseconds--
if that. Whether it's wars
or poems or packaged stars.
Each fade or get lost
in the noise
of the moment. Even death.
Even the deaths that make you think
how could the world not stop
with acknowledgement, let alone reverence,
doesn't. And even though that death
might be sad, even tragic,
are not sad nor tragic. It is all too
dramatic, orchestrated, scripted, all
a trick to just
keep us going to keep us hoping
to keep us showing up
to punch the time-clocks
with the same sense of failure
we had yesterday
and not punch ourselves out
of the coma.
We can fool ourselves
with fame, money, even love,
but that's like putting a bandaid
over someone gut shot.

We like to think that age
makes us wise,
but our years of wisdom
lies in front of us
always. We think
we might catch it
and we do
for a second
and the wisdom
turns on us
again.
And so we sit,
sit to it,
on sofas
of discontent,
watching,
sucking our lip,
thinking of all the things
we no longer have to do:
work, love, understand.
We just have to get up
more often to piss,
strain against the sun scratched day,
think of children thinking
of monkeys,
pretend that bitterness
tastes good
in an upturned mouth,
close our eyes
when the afternoon heat
makes us lazy
and drift into
a sleep without
rest. We will conjure
up memories of all the pretty girls
in ankle socks
pink lipstick, nails pink
and chipped and perfume
store bought and sweet, so sweet
that it stands between
the fall of rose petals
wrinkled and oily.

It is not the day
nor the hour; it is neither
a plan nor a conceit; it is
simply the anthill of us
never being able to know
the life of lions.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

Saturday, May 4, 2013

TO MY LOVER

The Betty Poems


I'm not a nice man.
I'm jealous, insecure,
somewhat cruel,
paranoid, narcissistic,
self-centered and selfish.
I demand attention
and come before
your family, friends,
interests and inclinations.
You're not allowed
to have had a life
before me
and certainly not one after.
I cannot be cut
from your thoughts
and even the rare times
I am not visible
my phantom limbs will be;
and they will be painful.
You can kick and scream
about it--that's only fair--
but that will only add
to the joy of loving me.
Still,
it's important to retain
your sense of humor--
at least for me it is.
I've never liked,
let alone loved,
those too serious
about their plight.
There's plenty of suffering
to go 'round.
I'm only trying
to get rid of some
of my own.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

SOME POEMS

come out
fully formed
like a good shit
that leaves
your asshole
clean
and just drops
without a mess
to clean-up.
I like that.
It's like having kids
and not have to raise
the motherfuckers.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

Friday, May 3, 2013

BEAUTY

is like genius:
most everyone has it
when young;
but show it to me
when fifty--
now you're sayin somethin.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013