Tuesday, March 31, 2015

TEACHING OTHERS


how to live
with my disease
is what I'll do
come end of April.
It simply landed
in my lap
like a cat
and I'd be a fool
not to let it
nestle there.
I'll do it
downtown
& uptown,
Monday
to Friday
with old fucks
& young
newly diagnosed
& scared
shitless.

I'll be paid
handsomely.
I don't
deserve
it, but
who does?
I'll be working
with nurses
& interns
& residents
& reps
and hope
as I do
always
that the pretty ones
will turn kindly
to a phrase
or a well put together
sentence.
I'll be on the lookout
for storage rooms
of intimacy
and an unguarded vial
of morphine
or dilaudid.
I'll tease myself
with love
that might supply
my book
with a different
ending.
Here's hoping
that it does
before I do.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

Friday, March 27, 2015

FORENSIC ANTHROPOLGY


Found
under reams
& scraps
of paper
curling
at the edges,
yellowed,
and torn
haphazardly
and done over
centuries
from something
larger, perhaps
monstrous.
With much pain
I pieced it
together:
a poem:

WHA
T
Y
OU
D
O
to me
is some
thing
I can't
ex
plain--
so I
won't .
I only
know
how
my body
sings
&
how eac h
note settles
in tge
flesh.
You've gotten away with crimes of the heart.
You've taken my love without telling me
how.

Not bad,
I said,
to myself; almost
human.
Maybe
I could trace it
back
to a time
before
cruelty.
I will
put it
up
and study it
under
the light.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

Thursday, March 19, 2015

ON WRITING: IN THE STRETCH


You've lived
with something
for almost
eight years.
You've loved it,
fought with it,
caressed it,
kissed it,
abandoned it...and
came back to it.
You can't leave it
because
it never left you.

You've aborted
six months of work,
a hundred and fifty pages,
once and nearly a hundred
again; you've played,
at first
with first
person,
then third,then
back to first.
You've made notes
on little scraps
of paper &
on the palm
of your hand;
you've played
in the stream
& of the stream,
you thought
a door opened
and saw it get shut
in your face.
It wanted nothing
to do with you.
It only made you
love it more.

No doubt
my love
of pain
held me
there.
I found that true
for other lovers
as well.
No doubt
there is something
to be said
for isolation
& all the pain
& pleasure
that brings.
There are those
who think
that we writers
are something
special--and we writers
would have to
agree. The truth is
that we're sonsofbitches,
cocksuckers, leeches,
and lovers of pleasures
that have nothing to do
with pleasures
of a more pedestrian
nature. We want
our cake
our fork
our slice
and our fix
and we don't
want to pay
for it in coin,
but in blood.

Now, when I can see
the end of this
I am more miserable.
It means, that soon,
I have to go
amongst you
again. Gimme
a smoke.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

BIG-BONED


and beefy,
my belly,
puffs
with pages,
distending
this monstrosity
over my belt.
I've eaten,
like a good boy,
all my words
and am now trying
to shit them out.
It's a push.
It's making
me just a little
sick; the fucker
weighs three hundred
and fifty-five pounds
as of this date
and is still
hungry.
It seems ravenous
for everything
I know
or have
done:
the pleasures,
the pains,
the betrayals
and triumphs.
It's anger
is its humor;
its aggression
is its patience.
It is a gourmand
of confusion.
It is
the iron chef
of the soul.

One cannot force
the breach;
the place
where it forms
is dark
& locked
from sight.
One must give-in
to its petulance
and not encourage
its reticence.

I love it
already.

(And, yes,
you're in there,
too).

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015