MILES OF MILES

He'd be 89 today.
I'm still surprised
he's dead--I thought
he was too mean
to allow death
to enter
his world.
KCR has
a marathon
happening:
every blow
into his horn
recorded, is aired.
To tell you the truth,
it's a bit much
to digest
in one sitting
like hanging
all the Picasso's
in one room;
Dostoyevsky read
in one sitting.
Still,
it's a grand gesture,
a bow
to renegade genes
of iconoclastic fury.

Please,
don't touch
that dial.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

WE AIN'T SO TOUGH

We like to think
we can fade anything.
Nothing's
too difficult
for us
humans
to conceive of
or do.
Perhaps?...

I prefer
the wolf
trapped
in steel
& chews
his foot off
without asking
for sympathy
or Zoloft;
or a three-legged
dog jogging; or
a wordless sparrow
in the Hawk's eye
with clipped wing
& a bread crumb
happy in the sun.
I've not seen
a mean mother elephant
nuzzling a dumb calf
or a lionness humiliate
her cub.
No flower I know
has hid
from the sun;
or a beetle
refuse dung.

We have too much
& so too little.
The eye
on the pyramid's dollar
blind and baffled
by good fortune.
It seems we've got
Nature's sequence
wrong. All
wrong.
Our memorial
to our wars
is above ground
not under it.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

NICE

to have thought of you
yesterday; the city ripe
and waiting
to be eaten,
as the air parted
to allow the sparest
of spirits
through; even the grass
dribbled semen
out the earth's
brittle cunt singing
into the hollows
of ears
attuned
to every and any
rumbling. How we go
in the eye's blaze,
all fire engine truth
& sanitarium green,
drifting on reeds
of failure
& fortune.

Funny
how the soul
shakes to the quick
syncopation
of fears
imagined.
How you,
hero or
heroine,
without knowing it,
fall back
on your own
petard
like Billie
handcuffed
to her hospital bed
wondering where
her next gig
was coming
from & what
sweet song
will make love
inside
her mouth
next.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

THE CHINESE

have been reading
my poetry
of late.
Lots of them.

And I've been eating
their food,
it seems,
all my life;
first Jewish Chinese:
eggrolls, spare ribs,
Chow Mein,
Chop Suey,
mustard, soy,
and duck sauce.
Only later
did I discover
Chinese food
when I lived
with a Chinese woman.
Thank God.

We've been getting fat
on each other's by-products,
(I hope),
then
& now.
It's the definition
of free-
trade.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

JUST WHEN

my body
was getting
comfortable
decaying;
just when
it began
to adjust
to the rust,
sludge,
& crumble;
just when
it found
its natural rhythms
of a dignified
obsolescence,
I outfoxed it--
I started to work
again; I got
a job.
I started to walk
to and from
the subways;
I started to
eat right;
get to bed
early; wake-up
early. In short:
I fucked my body up.

It's now taken
its revenge:
my dick
grew back (I think
it got longer)!
My hair
has a gleam;
my teeth
whiter,
my gums
are pink!
People no longer
give me
their seats
on the subway
or bus.

Once again,
I'm indestructible.
Once again,
I'm in
trouble.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015