Thursday, June 30, 2016

AN OLD FASHIONED BARE KNUCKLES FISTFIGHT


with death
I've been having
from an early age.
I now look forward
to that minute's rest
between rounds.
He grins at me
& I grin back.
I know
he will take me
out
eventually
but not before
I bloody him some more.
Yes,
he will get me,
but when he does
there'll be much less
of me
to take.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

WEDNESDAY 5:13


Two women
walked by
on the sunny streets
of Greenwich Village
wearing nothing
but Saran Wrap.

One was tall
& blond,
humongous tits,
round ass,
hairy snatch;
the other was skinny,
red hair,
pencil eraser nipples
pointing straight out
from a flat chest,
shaved clean
around the cunt.
No signs,
no cameras,
no film crew,
no followers,
no nothin.

It was only a fat lazy Wednesday
and aside from TheEmpireStateBuildingWoolworthBuildingChryslerBuildingYankeeStadiumBronxZooBotanicalGardensDTrain ConeyIslandNathan'sJacksonPollockDeKooningCharlieParkerMilesDavisBillieHolidayGuggenheimMetWhitneyModernSlugsBlueNoteHalfNoteVanguardQTrain4,5,6TrainFifthAveBusMeatMarketHuntsPointFultonFishMarketChinatownKoreaTownLittleItalyBobDylan GinsbergKlineRothkoJonesBraszPumaPearl...and me...
it was what makes
this city great.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

COMING


into that last hour
of the week,
rounding third,
heading for home,
is a beautiful thing.
You've made it
thru another week
of danger
to yourself
& others.
You haven't gotten killed
or killed the others
that you wanted to;
you've accomplished shit--
good & bad
--without wounding
or getting wounded.
Life has taught
you nothing
except
survival
& that,
my friends,
is triumph
enough.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Sunday, June 26, 2016

YOU THINK IT'S EASY


waiting
on the muse?
Try it
sometime.
Ya sit, sit, sit...
& nothing. Fucking piss.
Not a goddamn thing
to get you hard.
Sit some more
waiting
for you to appear,
to give me
a reason
to go on--
a slim one,
I know,
but baby
these are some mean fucking times;
& ya take
what the dealer
deals. Then
you cheat,
steal, lie,
squeeze those cards
for all they're worth:
sometimes,
not much;
sometimes
a fortune.

I'll take
my chances
with you.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Thursday, June 23, 2016

HOW TO SHOOT YOURSELF IN THE FUCKIN HEAD


First:
Get a set of parents
who are out of their fucking minds.
Next:
Digest them
whole, absorb
their judgements:
you're shit,
the world is shit,
everything's shit.
Next:
Believe that.
Then:
Go out into the world.

Lock & Load.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

SAM

http://bit.ly/28Trzb6

You were three
and I was nearly sixteen.
You had yet to find
misery, and I had found
too much of it.
You would, shortly, catch-up.

Then, in Bed-Stuy,
I saw Sam
live. My old man
took me. Lucky,
for me, he was
a black Jew
for his time.
Sam defined
my pain; he helped
get to my bones.

I've tried
to get to
yours.

I'm still
trying.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

TENDING MY GARDEN


on my little patch
of Hell:
A memorial
this morning
for Mr. Bamberg
who spent 15 years
in Green Haven
on a 25 to Life bid
lived for 6 months
with us
before pancreatic cancer
did what the streets couldn't:
take him out.
The staff
& his cousin was there.
It seems Mr. Bamberg
was real pleasant
to work with & his nephew
claimed he taught him
everything his dead parents couldn't:
except how to get out of his own zip code.
And then there were our tenants
who came our of their caves
for the free cake & coffee.

Then there are the live ones:

Ronny's on a cocaine binge;
his two hands as big as pillows
from I.V.ing his veins
and missing;
Little Paulie has an abscess
from shooting dope into dead highways;
Bent Over Paulie
who has a hump back
from scoliosis
& great nutrition, split
from his hospital bed
& was last seen hustling
roses down the avenue
of the dead
on 42 do-wop street; Eva
was issued a bench warrant;
& Marty began a gig--
his first one in ten years
since his 7 year bid
in Dannemora
and looked like a kid
when he came back
to tell me.
Some
might find that depressing.
Too bad
for them. They've never
missed a meal
or slept on a grate;
they never walked
down a street
that wasn't lit
for them.
But I've got
an easy two days
off that I'm going
to enjoy. Praise
the Lord.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Monday, June 20, 2016

I WANT A LITTLE SUGAR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbKlvWvpD2g

Don't you?
A little rush?
Make you woozy,
it will,
make you
thrash your head,
side to side,
your body shimmy
like fresh made jello,
feel the wetness slide
within and outside you.
C'mon darlin,
ya can leave
your insulin
home; I got plenty
and besides:
finally we'll be
someplace where
we're not.
Slide it
over.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

URBAN LOVE


I'll take
your silence
as a "yes,
go on (please)
go on."
Watch
while I take
everything
from you;
it's a stick-up
without a gun.

Don't move.
Put your hands
down & your arms
around me.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Saturday, June 18, 2016

BETTY, MY DEAR


You must tell me
if you really want me
to stop;
if it hurts
too much;
if you want
a tourniquet applied
where a torrent of words flow;
if you want to save
our minds
or our hearts?

The beasts
are in the
forests where
the prisoners
are hunted.
I would give them quarter
if I had change
of a dollar.

Instead,
I offer you safety
nestled
in a madman's glance.
You know,
of course,
I'm lying.

Come closer.
Yes, whisper.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

WHAT WOULD BE THE CRIME


if you loved me?
What would you lose
if you lost yourself?
What would you give up
if you gave up
defending against
your ghosts?

I, too,
am a loner
who craves
a lover
when I want; I, too,
am a howling maw
of misery
& trouble; I, too,
am skilled
at the art
& pleasures
of self-flagellation.

One day
we'll meet
on a border
of heaven & hell
& skip
between the two.
We'll have plenty
to laugh about--
our stinginess
with ourselves
being just one
of our follies.
Maybe the next time
we die we will
have really listened
to Hank
and choose to allow
what we love
to kill us.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

I FEEL YOU, BABY


trying to go
against your grain,
sanding those nasty
splinters down
and not quite managing
your heat
and not quite believing
your heart's lust
and not all together sane
and so full of fears
while you balance your love
on a moon beam
and want so badly
to be wanted
and...

do not worry
you are
and will
always
be...

but I must go,
without the hand
I want to hold;
I must make
those compromises
to buy some extra
time for
myself. Biology
is selfish
& I bend
toward
the sun.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Sunday, June 12, 2016

DO YOU FEEL ME, BABY


Do you feel
those little fish
hooks hanging
from your heart,
a thumping bass drum
lifting your lovely legs
against your will;
do you obey
your history
and dismiss your future;
does your temples throb
from a body's nastiness
and wet the flesh
that meets your center?

Rome screams
for its lost emperors.

Before history
there were moans.
Before that
nothing.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Friday, June 10, 2016

I WOULD WANT YOU


with me
always
watching
Greek fishermen
wearing thick-ribbed
blue sweaters
& watch-caps
wash salt
from their eyes
& talk to me
of childhood
flights.

The Aegean's net
of kelp & foam
catches our brine soaked fingers
like crazy minnows scurrying
between light shafts & toes
while danger plays
across my lower lip
waiting for your teeth
to bite
& coax a ribbon of red
to bathe in.
We can finger paint
each other's name
on our cheeks
in blood
& lick each letter
with menstrual madness.

I will not write again
(to you.)


Until I do.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

THE ART OF FALLING IN LOVE


A circus catch
in Hell;
Marlon Brando crossing
the river Styx;
Bogart riddled
not with bullets
but cancer
a non-filtered
hanging
from a lip looking
for a short skirt
at a boxing match.
Today we walk
to a dance
not knowing
who's playing.

We had the luck
of Beckett
lying
in a dung-heap
of prayer.
But
we are well-equipped
for this ride:
you have a few stories
and I have Bach's cello
in my pocket.

Tonight
I'm making a stew
from Proust's neck bone;
and if you'd be so kind
to put his gizzards
in that blender
we can dine
in style.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016


Tuesday, June 7, 2016

COWBOYS & INDIANS


Knew this old Navaho,
though maybe,
now that I think about it,
coulda been a Sioux,
maybe Apache, no, no, Pawnee,
hell Comanche, Mohawk--
he was some fucking Indian
--with a face, damn,
sun scorched & baked,
cracked like good leather
who, when I asked why
every one of his goddamn songs
were all about the rain?

He looked at me
for a good while
trying to figure out
if I was a Presbyterian,
or Baptist, a Jew,
maybe Italian or Irish
or some fucking white man
--because we ain't got no rain,
he finally said. How
are your people doin with love?

Gimme another,
I said.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Monday, June 6, 2016

SAVING LIVES


in the Bronx--
the drug addicted,
mind addled,
soup labeled,
helpless hapless hopeless
& restless,
the bottle babies
of inflammable juice,
the deluded,
the schized,
the solipsistic,
the sycophants
paranoid jeepsters
& romantics
trilled, tripping
& tripped-up,
the deranged
& derogatory
mise-en-scene misers
or porno prosthetics...
---and those are
the run-of-the-mill
crippled from birth
& channeled
by betrayals
great & small, but
are not beyond
my reach.

There are those,
though,
who are
beyond me:
a woman who gave
a placenta soaked
all the news that's fit to print
paper to a lady going to work
with her two premature twins lying
above the fold;
or a man who watched
his dad & mom,
hand in hand
go back into their home
that his dad had taken
a match to;
or a man thinking
his teeth are ice cubes.

There are no courses
to teach this; it is
a university difficult
to get into, but
once accepted
even fewer
who graduate.
It's not something
you aspire to
in all its
permutations.
But once enrolled
you must take
every and any elective
that life serves up. You can say
it's a calling
where you're always dialing
the wrong number;
it's a blizzard
in a hot house;
an ant
with diabetes
wearing
an insulin pump.
You've survived
without knowing
how or why.
You've made it
an art.
And now it pays
the rent
as it saves
your life
as well.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Saturday, June 4, 2016

SHOUT-OUT TO THE PREZ:


Hey, Barack--
ya wanna do something?
I mean DO Something?
OK...
Let Ali rest inside
our Capitol's Rotunda
and let those
who want to,
or need to,
or have to,
pay their respects.

If not--please
shut the fuck up.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

MARILYN,


her corpse turning 90
today, celebrates all
who whacked-off to her
in their dreams
& her solitude.

And I'm being picked-up
& driven, by a new squeeze,
to shoot craps
near the Atlantic
City boardwalk.

Win or lose
it will be
a better day
for me
for sure.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016