Thursday, October 29, 2015

THE NIGHTMARE RIDES THE RAILS


The sunset is cold.
Evenings are cruel
reminders of mercies
once tendered by stick-up men
now behind the cage
mortgaged by age & small print.

I carry my limbs
like remembrances,
thick logs held as offerings
to burn in my night's furnace.
This is not penance.
This is an old Wurlitzer
in a 42nd Street dive.
This is speed rack Scotch.

She spread herself.
And I did the same.

I'm attracted
to the way poppies ooze.
How, when they're sliced
the jism slides
down their face.
It was a wise culture
who saw their mouths
around the bulbs easing
the cuts of a failing
light.

How women know
how to touch
the way they do
sits at the crossroads
of silence
& mercy.
Adam's curse,
revisited
nightly, plays
across her lips.
Her tongue licks
a wound deeper
than the world.

I would wake,
if I could,
to a life
like mine.
I would shake
my oily fur,
matted & soiled
from a mongrel's
impetuousness,
& find
my ear
in your
mouth
& your whispers
on my breath.

Let me love you,
it said,
and I awoke
looking
for the voice
& a gun.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

Monday, October 26, 2015

SHE PLEASURES HERSELF


with a centipede
like apparatus;
little white rubber nubs
juts from the
two foot shaft
penetrating her
unlatched body.
In & out,
in & out,
slowly
quickly
slowly
slide
the head
the heart
the cock
side
to
side.
Nibbling
outside
now
inside
now
both
while her mind
conjures
a mysterious
& delicious brew
of desires.

She wants
to be taken
hard,
I think.
Her life
has not
been charitable.
She needs pain,
more than most,
& responds
to pain
more than most.
A pain
that was there
waiting
for her,
long before
words
made meaning
irrelevant.
Science
has sustained her;
measured her;
doled her out
in units;
she lives in a world
brokered by
mathematics.
She trusts
no one;
believes
everyone.
Her center
carries a grief
that rides
a deep & abiding
wind; it shakes
the branches
that gives her
balance.

She had thought
she knew
loneliness
until
she met
me.

She is ready
to love. And
so am I.
We know how
at the edge
of a ripple
lies a wake.

Both of us
will dine alone
tonight.
It's why
we're so, so
ravenous.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

IT'S A BITTER PILL


to wake-up
sick
and alone
and south
of sixty.
Your chest
hurts
from an impossible
cough;
the phlegm
so thick
it sticks
to the side
of the drain;
your throat
beat-up
& raw;
hot eyes
& hotter
forehead.
Your bones
ache;
you're cold
& hot
& cold
again.
No one
asks
anything
of you
because
no one's
there;
no one
brings
an aspirin,
hot tea,
a kind
word--
mom
is long
dead;
your wife
has long
split;
breasts
have been
milked.
The cow
gives
nothing
but kicks.
Your ass
is exposed.
The doctor
is out
or busy
or needs
a doctor.
His nurse
sleeps
with the
orderly
& he
pushes
his own
pills.

You've arrived
at Coney Island's
nakedness;
the Stillwell Avenue
of the soul.
The train
stalls, the conductor
is a madman.
You take
a deep breath
& leap.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

Saturday, October 24, 2015

OBSESSIONS


are our jailor's key:
they lock you up,
they lock you down,
and they let you out
just long enough
to crave the relief
they offer: a dance
on the head of a pin
called death.
They simplify
complications.
They ease
bordom.
They give rise
to fantasies
only fantasy
can provide.

Work, gambling,
eating, sex,
drinking, drugging,
masturbating
ourselves
endlessly
& forever
is surely
preferable
to the dull
monotonous
routine
that dog's
our days.
To be caught
is to be
liberated.
Where are they?
Who are they with?
When will I be with them?
How will I be with them?
When will they call?
Should I answer?
Will I answer?
Should I call?
How will they come back?
Will they come back?
When will they come back?
Are they fucking?
How are they fucking?
What position are they in?
How big is the cock?
the breast? the wallet?
Do they think of me?
When do they think of me?
How much to bet?
The next meal?
Draw to a straight?
Twenty minutes to three, twenty five minutes to a drink, the taste, the smell, the first sip, the going down, the settling of nerves, the feeling right, normal, OK, seventeen minutes to three...or five, or midnight, or three a.m?

Writers write and painters paint
to make vibrant the dullness of time.
The great Karl Wallanda said:
"Walking the wire is living,
the rest is waiting."

And now,
my waiting,
begins.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

THE BOXING MATCH


She rang my bell
& I met her downstairs.
It was a beautiful night
in Greenwich Village:
cool, a slight breeze & dry.
I left most of my week
upstairs
& brought what I hoped
was my best game
with me.
We danced
toward each other:
respectful, wary,
cautious, feeling
each other out.

Round one
was called
even.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

I MISS


the spongy
sea-soaked
boardwalk.
I miss the white
Converse sneakers
that walked it.
I miss the taste
of warm gin
drunk on the moist sand
holding the hand
of a young girl
anticipating
the first kiss.
I miss double features
on a wet Saturday
afternoon for a quarter
and hot buttered popcorn
and bonbons
and Milk Duds
sticking between teeth.
I miss my top teeth.
I miss my four toes.
I miss her titties
so soft and powdered
by Johnson&Johnson
and I miss being scared
I'd break them.
I miss the first time
I punched my father
& frightened him.
I miss the absence
of memory.
I miss all the bookmarks,
in all the pages,
and all the expectation
that welcomed me
and disinvited the world.
I miss the stupidity
of youth--your youth,
my youth, our youth.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

Monday, October 19, 2015

THE SUN DRIPS


its Monday morning mercy
through the slats.
I've taken off
to parts unknown.
Perhaps
one word
will follow
another
until
something
is formed
that resembles
nothing
else
that came
before it.
It's a poor excuse,
I know,
for living
but
it's the only one
that continues
to make
sense.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

Sunday, October 18, 2015

GOOD WOMEN


were all
too good
for me.
Especially
if they were smart,
beautiful,
& giving.
Eventually,
that combo
spelled doom--
for me
not them.

Madwomen
captivated me:
alcoholics,
pill heads,
head strong
whores
of the senses.
Some
were bipolar,
tripolar,
strung out
& senseless
to the needs
of others--
like me.
They were tipsy
& tortured,
believing they
had it worst
of all
while I knew
no one
could have it worse
than me
dealing
with them.

We were locked
in a dance
of death.
Usually doing a tango
inside the coffin
of our own despair.
It was not without
laughs and its own
magic
& beauty
which held me fast
to my original
breast of
emptiness.

Now,
I most want
a good woman,
a kind woman,
a woman who knows
her strengths
& my weakness:
the self
myself.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

Saturday, October 17, 2015

HIDE & SEEK


You put out shit
to hide shit.
You let yourself
be known
only to lower
the curtain.
You say what you mean
only because you know
how the self is fooled
by honesty.
It's almost
like finding
what felt like love
instead of
the fear
that was there
instead.

How will I know
who it is I am,
when the me
who finds me
is not the me
who went looking
in the first place?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

Thursday, October 15, 2015

WORDS ARE SHIT, TOO


Basically,
you gotta let em
come out
all at once
when they want to.
Later,
you gotta clean em up
only because
you don't wanna stink
too much.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

PROSTITUTES, PARASITES...AND YOU


"Name me someone who's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him."
--Visions of Johanna
--Bob Dylan

Artists
are the worst:
sucking your blood
or sucking your cock;
there's Dante's circles
and your family
and closest friends;
then there's Nature
sucking up
your carbon.
We are each other's ticks,
and gnats and mosquitoes,
bedbugs and crabs and bacteria
alive on the skin,
grabbing on to mucous
membranes, intestinal linings and tissue,
picking the pockets
of students and clients,
husbands and wives,
children and grandchildren.
It's the daisy chain
of moves and countermoves.

Prostitutes sell themselves
short. They never factor in
the cost of putting a cost
on their time and time
really is
our most precious
commodity.

One day
the title
of this poem
will be a course
at The New School's
Adult Division.
Folks will pay
hundreds of dollars
to suck the wisdom
out of text & totem
and philosophize
meaning. They might
get together
after class
to discuss
the discussion
they had
a minute ago
and suck
some more.
They'll go home
eventually
with a little less
blood and a little more
illusion. It's our own
soap opera, our only station.
And I'll be back
same time
next week.

Stay tuned.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

RUSSIAN ACTION


I seem to be
getting a lot of hits
on this blog
from old mother Russia.

I like that.

People of the earth;
people of history;
people who are nuts
in all the ways
I can understand:
literature nuts;
music nuts,
art nuts,
nut nuts.

My eighth grade english teacher,
Miss Edelman, my first crush
on an older woman, showed me
Dostoyevsky's C&P; Rasknolikov
dropped his ax
and cleaved my head
in two.
He was followed by Gogol,
& that old bedbug himself,
Mayakovsky. They're all
the soil's blood.

And I'd like to think
I am, too.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

Monday, October 12, 2015

PROPOSITIONED


She'd come over,
she told me,
and make me
feel good
for a hundred;
for two hundred
she'd make me
feel great;
and for five hundred
she'd offer
herself
served
up in whatever
way I liked.

"Over easy,"
I teased,
the yolk unbroken
and nestled
within white folds.
"You're the chef,"
she whispered,
showcasing one
of her ingredients.

I now needed
to remember
where the hell
I'd put
my utensils.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

Saturday, October 10, 2015

SOMEBODY HAD TO LIVE THIS LIFE


Were you gonna do it?
Were you?
Or you?
Or you?
No
you weren't.
It was up to me
to draw
to an inside straight
& get my parents
& get their crazy lineage
& language & cultivate their
sperm & eggs & zygote & shit
& get waylaid, side swiped
with a naive but monstrous
sentimental emotional stupidity
nurturing a sugar fear,
a people fear a crowd fear, a fear
of self & sustainability
in a home of sickness & sustenance.

Raise your hand
if you want diabetes & dope,
institutions & dangling
from the puppet strings
of failure.

I didn't think so.

But how about
if I threw in Bird
& Billie
& Bach
& Beethoven
& Bukowski?
And I'm not even
out of the"B's" yet.
How about Beckett
& bowling
& black beauties,
& Brahms?

How about Coeds
from Harvard
& Bennington
who play
the piano
& know your
secrets better
than you do?
How about Coney Island
when it was Coney Island?

Nobody becomes
who they are
until they live
who they are.
And if they
don't do it
who the fuck
will?

Like you
reading this
now. What
will you do?
Stand pat
or make
a move?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

MY TWIN


had he lived
would be 96
today. But
he was crazy:
he drank,
he smoked,
he ran around
with chicks
all night
in places
like The It Club
playing piano
eating ribs
hanging with addicts
and owners and madmen
into the early morning hours.
He never got enough sleep,
he never got enough anything
except messages
from the gods:
Bluemonk, Bemsha Swing, Ruby,
My Dear, Straight, No Chaser,
Well You Needn't, Round Midnight.
He wore heavy woolen coats
in Texas heat, bamboo shades,
and skimmers, hats, hundreds
and hundreds of hats.

I was always jealous
of him: we share a date,
we hear voices, make of them
what we can, but he talked back.
I'm more or less mute.
Tickling my typer keys
is about as much
as I can do.
Let me get on
with my day
listening
while a NYC radio station
celebrates
his birth...and my
continuation.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

Friday, October 9, 2015

MRS. ORMOND


my fourth grade teacher
scared the shit outta me.
She was a tall, Irish
#2 pencil, dressed
in black, from her tight
neck button to her black
buffed leather shoes
showing heel wear. Her hair
was as severe as she was,
tied tight
in a bun streaked with gray.
Her lips thin, mirthless.
She'd stand in front of us
with a ruler,
not to measure anything,
but to whack
the scared wooden desks
as she drove home
warnings:
Multiplication Table tomorrow
she'd spit into the first row.
We knew
she meant it.
Nothing short
of a nuclear war drill
would prevent her
from marching to each desk,
to stand in front of each asshole
wet with fear and demand: 3x7,
9x6, 1x0, and wait for our eyes
to stop like a deranged slot machine
as we arrived at the numbers.

The year was 1955,
and I was in PS 222.
The Brooklyn Dodgers won The World Series,
Sugar Ray Robinson still ruled,
factories and jobs and families were healthy,
Chinese food was consumed by Jewish clans
on Sunday, Johnny-On-the-Pony & Ringolevio
were games of choice, girls weren't discussed,
but Mrs. Ormond had us
by the balls.

It wasn't easy
back then,
it was never easy,
back then
or now
but
it sure was
simple.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

A POEM TO ALL MY ALCOHOLIC AND DRUG ADDICTED BRETHREN

For MCM: "Go on with your terrible self."


There is such a thing
as suffering
magnificently,
nakedly,
monstrously,
alone.
Refusing
escape
or
medication.
Feeling
each bite,
each scrape,
each twist
of the razor
like wind.
You stare
into a black skull
doubting
who it is
that wishes
to punish
relentlessly
& perfectly
and wonder
how you
know yourself
so well
& can do
nothing
about it.
And manage
a grin
while kicking
yourself
to the
curb.
There is much
beauty in feeling
anything
but neutral.
The car moves
through hills
that sing
& the moans
are only
harmony
sung in the sweet key
by street choirs
of mercy.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

THE TIT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS


is the suck
of interpretation;
a nurturing
selfishness;
a milky voice
in a wilderness
of motives;
the cost of bliss
in an urban world
built by snowmen.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

Sunday, October 4, 2015

ALL ABOARD


Memory is a motherfucker;
It can't be trusted.
Especially your memory.
Your memory was always
suspect. You know it
and I know it.
Still,
we get on board.
You never know,
do you,
where it's going
or how
it's gonna get there?
It always surprises you--
thinking you're taking the express
& discovering, after the doors close,
it's running on local tracks.
And it ain't being sung
by Curtis Mayfield or Al Green
or The Persuasions; in fact,
nothing's being sung
yet everything is heard
in this melodic atonal cacophony
above the grinding of the wheels.
It's an unreliable train
ferrying an unreliable narrator
whose perfect sense
is unimpeachable.
All those stops
stopped at
and stopped up
and stopped still:
I look for Milk Tit Avenue, but round
Daddy's Bend; try to lower my eyes at
Agony Way; try a detour to Women's Wonder Wheel,
but fall into Judy's Triangle;
jump off Heroin Cliff; get back at Hope Lookout,
and avoid Church Street completely
except in fact while Masturbation Circle
appears again and again but less and less
as the brakes grind down.

Luck
has played a part,
and an absent minded conductor
has not yet punched
my ticket.
Your trip, of course,
is different.
And the seat
next to me
is always
empty.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

Friday, October 2, 2015

THE COFFEE SHOP COUNTESS


would jerk-off
a few of us
in jr. high school.
She'd sit there,
sipping hot cocoa,
a mountain
of whipped cream
mustaching her lip.
Her big brown eyes
mascara thick
watching us
loiter in our Mermaid Ave
Huba-Huba sanctuary.
She was part French
part Jewish and all firecracker hot,
though she chose her times
to ignite us. Mostly she sat,
reading and laughing at what she read
or what we said or what we did--
which was nothing much.
Sometimes she came over to one of us,
sat down and pushed her face into
one of our necks. Our breaths froze.
She would look into our eyes
& without warning,
kiss us,
sticking her tongue into our mouths,
& just as suddenly get up & leave.
Hardly any words were exchanged.
Other times she'd grab hold of a hand
and take one of us into a back booth.
She'd rub the outside of our jeans
until we came--it didn't take long.
Steve once asked if
he could touch her tit
for luck?
What's luck? she asked.
You know, he stumbled, good luck.
What is this good luck? she pressed.
Stickball, he said, we have a stickball game after school.
I don't know this stickball, she said, but here touch it.
We all watched as Steve stuck his hand down her blouse
and grinned the adolescent grin.

She never came back after that.
Bad luck for us: We lost her
& the game that day.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015