Thursday, July 25, 2013

THE POPE DOES RIO


His Holiness came
to the beaches
of Rio
and the favelas
too. He touched
us all,
especially me,
when he put his holy hand
on my sinner's head
while my daughter
gave a blowjob
in the other room
to a man
she doesn't
know, while
two of his friends
waited.

I felt
truly blessed.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

Sunday, July 21, 2013

POOR FELIX

The Betty Poems

must be terribly confused:
recently bitten
by a fellow canine
his dog walker walks,
he took
twenty stitches in his leg;
then Felix was kicked
in his chest
by one who he loves
and professes to love him
for being
a dog
and now
has to wear a megaphone
like funnel
which is meant
to prevent him
from biting the shit
out of the stitches
that itches
him to madness.
To suffer all this
on top of the past few weeks
being forced
at his own home
to deal with
and adjust
to a demented, yapping,
incontinent,
pipsqueak
chihuahua.

If there's an ounce of mercy
in your veins, mom,
cook him a steak tonight,
and then get him laid
with the finest
bitch in town.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

TRAYVON MARTIN & ALL US NIGGERS

Yeah,
you heard right:
we all niggers.
Everyone who has to get up
every mornin,
put on some black face
and do some mindless
fuckin shit
just to pay rent
are niggers.
Even the niggers
who dance
on basketball courts,
the quote unquote "gridiron",
the jeweled green
of baseball pastures,
are niggers entertaining
all the rest of us
to sell us a beer
another car
hemorrhoid tolerance,
chicks
who we'll
never get
and never
got. Just so
we can drag our ass
into work the next day
and wonder where
the time went.
They have this figured out:
they pay us just enough
so we have to show-up
on Monday.
We know this.
We know this country's
racist: big fuckin deal?

There is no more Martha
and The Vandellas. No more
dancin in the streets. In fact,
no more Motor City. No more Newark.
Even New York is pretty,
dignified, safe
for all the corporate hustle.
The avant-garde's gum'
are bleeding; all the teeth
have been shaken loose
and lie like pebbles
in God's rectum.
The gears are oiled
the commerce continues
with no one to fall
on the machinery.
We are
a tame lot.
The preachers
have been bought; their
protests are funded
by the people protested
against. It is all
one big circle jerk
and it's our dicks
getting pulled.

I humbly suggest
that the Jordans,
the Kobes, the Riveras,
the James', the C.C's,
the Jeters, the Denzels,
the Spikes, the Lee's,
the Smiths, the Berry's,
who have squirreled away
millions walk
the fuck off the field,
the court, the stage,
and not sell another
motherfuckin thing.
The only thing this cunt of a country knows
is money and how to fuck for it.
They have to feel it
to believe it.
If they don't
don't wear
hoodies and walk
as if you mean it.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

Thursday, July 4, 2013

MY GIRL, BETTY, & INDEPENDENCE DAY

The Betty Poems

I'm glad
that my girl
is a pain in the ass.
I'm sure
that I give her the same pain
in her ass as well.

I'm free
of nearly every
addiction
except her.
I'm a slave
who wants to stay
on this plantation
of crazy love
and I hope
I haunt
each and every breath
she takes.

Who'd want to be free
when this feels
so fuckin good?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

I'M JEALOUS

The Betty Poems

of everything
and everyone
except myself;
and everything
and everyone
is jealous of me;
that is how it works
or doesn't.
We desire
every absence
in ourselves
as if
that would bring us nearer
to completion
only to find
a sponginess
and air pockets
in our souls.

I see an ugly man
walking with a hideous woman.
They seem to be
at peace
although I know
their peace
is only temporary.
And their fights
would bring us
to our knees
as it does them.
It makes me think
of my girl,
up in Toronto, safe
from my mania
and keeps me safe
from hers. Yet,
I miss her terribly.
Her touch,
her look,
her smell,
even of combat--
perhaps especially
of combat--
has me longing
for the ring
of combat
under the white hot lights
of conflict
where the mind
and hearts of men
were meant to exist.
She has brought me
that love
again.
It is within that
that love exists
where love retreats
into the madness
we were born with
and that few
remain attached to.

Suddenly,
that couple
of human beasts
became beautiful
and the stars came out
and aligned.
But I'm still jealous
even after
such silly profundities
like the writing
of this poem.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

ANNIVERSARIES IN BOTH MAJOR AND MINOR CHORDS

The Betty Poems

Eighteen years ago
today, I was waiting
for a plumber
to unclog
and rewire
the pumps
that kept my heart
beating. He did
a good job.
A year later,
to the day,
I was married
and she helped
to keep it beating
for almost a decade
more. She, of course,
had the harder
and more complicated
job and
she did a good one, too.
It seems like
a hundred years
before that, I was a kid
coveting Cherry Bombs,
Ashcans, and Black Cat
firecrackers to squirrel
away and explode,
devil-may-care
on our ridiculous day
of Independence.

Now, my celebrations
are daily: tying
my sneakers, brushing
my teeth, supporting
myself. But my most
celebratory act
and most important
is loving a woman
who loves me
back.
How she does it
and why
is the most scary
thing of all.
Not having to do,
but being done;
not having done,
but doing. A simpler
complexity was always
my unraveling.
Perhaps her distance
has brought me nearer?
Perhaps my years
has made me younger?
Perhaps my confusion
has made me teachable?
What I do know--
as much as we're able
to really know anything--
is that love always comes
as a surprise,
and as a gift,
and must be untied slowly,
delicately
as if a child, late at night,
was talking, whispering really,
to God
who was somewhere
inside
his own
clasped
hands.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013