Saturday, May 28, 2016

SUMMER


has always
reminded me
of summer--
from the first jolt
of blistering 90+
my voice rises,
gets higher;
Beethoven's 128
becomes 18, a funeral dirge
changes into Frankie Lymon,
nipples signify
not mom,
but hope,
mystery & night
are my double helix;
a tough tattoo
sings do-wop
just because
it can.
Where else should my fingers go
if not across the expanse
of a bra strap
fumbling with hooks
& fever; what's more
exciting than learning
how to smoke
& French kiss
with your older cousin?
You drop dime after dime
on new sides: The Miracles,
Shirelles or Drifters.
What is more miraculous
than a pool ball banked
or a basketball kissing backboards
or the one/three pocket in an alley?

And what is more impossible
than imagining yourself
here...
now...
suddenly weighted,
arrived at what was
once your forest
of motives,
your dark wood,
only to find
you're really
nowhere?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Thursday, May 26, 2016

KISSING THE FATES


I know this babe
who's in prison.
I write her
nearly every day
both for amusement
& salvation.
I've offered,
sometimes,
a key--
but that
has proved
to be
a problem:
How does one accept
a key from
your jailor?
Both of us,
it seems,
are fated
to do
the maximum.
Let us kiss
those fates
with abandon.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT


My first wife
married me
for a Green Card;
and now you
for rent stabilization--Christ,
where's love?

First safety,
then freedom,
she said,
then love.
Dontcha know anything?

Fuck Maslow.
I looked out the window
at The Verrazano Bridge.
I saw that sonofabitch
being built,
I said,
from my bedroom window.
We were on our way
toward a frank & fries
at Nathan's.

I don't know, Erika,
do you even like me?

I could get used to you,
she offered. I'm gonna
work with kids,
she went on, I can practice
on you.

I know I'll get jealous
of you bein with the dyin kids
so much; that's the kind of guy
I am.

Cropsey Avenue was coming up,
and the air cooled
and turned salty. The sun
burned a hole on my leg.
My history was dotted
with acne.

If it makes you feel better,
I'm getting the worse of the deal,
she stated.
It does make me feel better,
but I still have to think on it,
I replied.
Don't think too long, hon,
somebody's gonna pull the trigger,
she teased and took her eyes off
the road to look at me, while I
kept mine on the oncoming
traffic. She was
a pretty good driver
but I was the best
with or without
a car.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

A DEATH RATTLE FROM CALVARY


Lincoln Road, Miami Beach,
hot as a motherfucker,
I moved slowly,
next to my father,
on his walker,
as we took our perch
outside Books & Co.,
me pretending
to be smart,
& he being
his cunt hound self,
watching the parade
of pussy squirt
by. I'd bought us
ten dollar chocolate ices
& twenty dollar Romeo et Juliet cigars
figuring we had one good afternoon left
to figure it out
but never did.
It might have been the heat
that swelled our egos
or our limited capacity
for love
that shrunk our worlds,
but whatever it was
it eviscerated speech
& we were both
grateful for that
I knew.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Sunday, May 22, 2016

WE TRADED KISSES


and rumors,
whispers of conspiracies,
suffused the concrete
against our backs
right-angled handball courts
in our schoolyard.
They were lit
by our backdrop, graffiti neon,
mouse eared, horses
made of iron charging
full throated & adamantine, a city
gun like rainbow jello,
weeping toward a jitterbug June.
Our t-shirts
still white, our arms
barely brown our hands
creaseless
careless yet tight
around fingers walking Spanish
inside each other
and the play of shadows.

We had time
for a cigarette
but only
if we shared it.
We saved our saliva
for our mouths
when they opened
to each other
& left the cigarette
perfectly dry.
Closer,
I said.
She laughed.
C'mon,
closer.
She draped one leg
across mine.
Closer.
Her mouth
& tongue
were in
my ear.
Nicotine
slid
down
my throat.

We had cut
our ninth period
in the ninth grade;
we were seniors,
we had
all the time
in the world.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

YOU KNOW


Dominican girls
are the best
kissers? she said,
like everyone,
including me,
was supposed to know that.
Yeah, I said,
I know it--
I fell
into this girl's lips
one time in Miami,
and still remember it;
can still
taste it, like
a warm pool
of honey.
Well,
I'm better,
she stated
simply,
assuredly; I'm older,
I've got...ways.

She let the word
dangle--
like the rest of me
was doing...

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Sunday, May 15, 2016

SHE DRIVES


for a living
while I sit
for mine.
She's a real pretty Dominican
with a kinda Brandy Alexander complexion
that you just wanna touch
let alone taste
while my shelf life
is long past its expiration date.
But she laughs
at my jokes
& that's music
enough, as we wend our way
past circumstance
& accidents.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

WHEN YOU'RE DEAD


you're dead,
they say.
What do you care
what happens
next?
Probably,
they're right.
But
still...

Hart Island, Potters Field,
looms large...
a storied history
of paupers perhaps,
but it creeps me
the fuck out
lying in a trench
with 150 strangers:
naked bones, hearts
with cupid arrows I
don't know...intestines,
smells, colons, empty
skulls & differing
opinions.

If, by chance,
you've been breathing
on my words
for whatever reason
and you don't see me
for three months let's say,
knock,
or call,
or get in touch
with my nutty brother (maybe
he's still alive?),
just get me
out of the ditch,
burn me up,
scatter me,
preferably
anywhere
where I won't
be seen.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Friday, May 13, 2016

THE GOOD & THE BAD


Miss Susie,
as she was called,
or Susannah Mushatt Jones
her birth name as she was known,
died yesterday
at 116 years of age
in Brooklyn; the last
of those born in the eighteen hundreds
in Lowndes County, Alabama.
Goddamn!
I've got
another 50 years (at least) to go
of watching Law & Order reruns
to beat her.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Sunday, May 8, 2016

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY


I think I like
driving best--
especially wet
etched gray days,
slick tears
against the windshield,
the slap of ribbons
of black rubber
& rhythms of tires
spitting pebbles,
cigarette pursed
between lips
listening to Uchida,
a Mozart sonata,
or Miles'
One For Daddy-O.
The grip
loosens,
humanity
fades.

Women escaped me.
No one more so
than Annie,
my mom: cold,
distant,
suffocating.
But she did
house me, & did
care for me
as only she could
before she lost
interest
& control;
and I want her
to know
I'm grateful
at least
for that.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Saturday, May 7, 2016

SHE FORCED ME


into positions
I had no right
trying to get into,
but she was so wrong
in so many
right ways
that it seemed wrong
not to try
to get it
right.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Friday, May 6, 2016

TO HAVE UNDERSTOOD


so little
at this age,
to be so late
in this life,
now strikes me
as funny.
The stumbles,
the missteps,
hitting
the ground
thinking:
I swear
the floor
was there.
Complexities
concocted
as the traffic
roared around
me. My breastbone
my blacktop's
white line; my thumb
up my ass.
Sometimes
the cars gave up
coming to a halt
and no matter how
many horns blared,
how many radiators
overheated, how much
steam rose from hoods,
they stayed
stuck. Fist fights
broke out
in my brain beating
each side
to a bloody pulp.

And now...
now it's all so simple:
I'm better
alone.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Thursday, May 5, 2016

THE BIG STRAINER


mashes & grinds & sifts
delectables & edibles & insufferable
into a bite sized baby's maw
easily absorbed easily digested
easily jettisoned & disregarded
allowing the barest visage, a ghost
of experience to cling to linger
in chambers lost or
barricaded.

Spaghetti or worms.
Necrosis or penecillin.
"A Swell" or swine.
Blue or blue is up
for grabs.

How sure we are
that our filter
isn't clogged &
& fogged & fucked
beyond reason.

How what we see
is what we see.
I am The Bible
as I read
the word
around me.

Once upon a time
we strained our precious pot
to separate the seeds & stems
from the merciful leaf;
it was our church
of ritual.
We prided
the sacrements.
We gently rubbed
and watched the colored grass
fall and pool in a mound below.
Stickiness and colors predicted
our religion & reward.
That was when I had friends
who were young & brilliant.

The pot is stronger now:
Culled & cultivated
by experts
& marketed in shops; it's
techno nature. A marriage
marred by intrusion: lights,
irrigation. Season-less.
We've let men
& machines
infect
what's left
of imagination.
We've let them
strain
even our
dreams.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

TO THE ALTER


fat & stupid
from answers
we had
& never used.
No chance
of having
children
save the ones
already made
but lost
along the way.

All that's left
on a broken plate
are slivers
of disappointment
as we paint
a radiant sky
black
&
brilliant.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Sunday, May 1, 2016

SUNDAY SNAKES


from Saturday's bowels,
like it's supposed to flush
six days of shit away
with one of rest
& respite.

What crap!

Please,
lemme sleep,
a little
longer.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016