Sunday, October 30, 2016

GETTING A DAY'S PARDON


In the forties
last week; colder times
are ahead
but not today:
seventy-five
& climbing
as if God
granted you
a conjugal visit
with his sun.
(He be doin
some mad
pimpin.)

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Saturday, October 29, 2016

I'VE BEEN LOVED


by women past
& present
many years older
or younger who
I love
when not too much
in love
with myself.
In each affair
I've given
everything
I couldn't
hold back.
Women who've been
to finishing schools
& rouged their nipples
& dressed before bed
in French silk taffeta,
and those who've spent
endless nights on open grates
on east village sidewalks
and brought weapons
wrapped with sex
& mindfulness
into our cradle.
They have ways
about them;
ways of doing
& of being done;
they bleed
style. They have monstrous
needs; they drink their own milk.
They drip neurosis
freely to mouths greedy
& grateful.

One day the words
will have moved on
to greener pastures--
then it will be over
for me
but not yet.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Thursday, October 27, 2016

MY KIND OF GAL


You're a willful little girl
who'll pretend
to eat all her food,
every last bit of it,
but that the toilet bowl
will swallow
sometime later;
you'll buy winning tickets,
but never cash them;
you'll wear disappointment
like a birthright
next to a trampled heart.
You'll get in front
of retrospect
and won't look
while crossing.
You don't believe
in God,
but wonder
if he's angry
at you.
You've predicted
your prophecy
and are determined
to get to where
you're unsure
of going.
You've set up
a lingerie shop
in the south Bronx
selling Parisian silk
to old whores
and do not care
how much cash you keep
on hand.
You are hellbent
and driven
and hand the keys over
to nobody.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

AN OPEN SECRET


The Chinaman
ironing shirts
knows this;
the matador
poised on his toes ready
to thrust
knows this;
the coke smuggling wetback
knows this;
the milkman
and gravedigger
the lancelot and stevedore
the film idol
and long distance trucker
and FBI tracker
and Appalachian miner
and proctologist
know this: Nothing
is worse
than fighting
with your woman
on Sunday night.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

SHE LOVED


shooting dope
and eating
Devil Dogs
and digging
White Light/White Heat.
She was
a handful.
She'd touch
D'Lugoff's balls
as he let us in
on Latin Night
Mondays at The Village Gate;
and placed a rose
on Simone's piano
because she wanted to.
She made her fix
by hustling
as a nude model
at SVA
but wouldn't fuck
the professor painter
of the class
no matter his name
or his threats.
Her name was Barbara
and she lived
on Pineapple Street
in Brooklyn Heights
and she died
before I could tell her
all she did for me.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Sunday, October 23, 2016

A HARD KNOT


of no

lives

inside me.

It claimed

this space

before yes

arrived.

Its flag

is black.

It has not

recognized

surrender.

It only weeps

for strangers

it has no chance

of ever knowing.

It stays,

like these letters,

between heartbeats

and consequence.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Friday, October 21, 2016

A PETRI DISH OF MURMURED MADNESS


Eye
droppers
& dollar collars.
Rubber
nipples.
Book matches
twined
& humping
each to each.
Spikes
dull
rusty
blood caked,
but O
so necessary.
Black carbon
underbellies
of spoons.
White ladies.
Dope sick.
A warm November
evening, '69.

Let's dance.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Thursday, October 20, 2016

APES, STILL--POST DEBATE POST MORTUM


How far
from the caves
& trees & forests
that history swings through;
how far
from the single cells
of slavery
& perfunctionary fucking
have we traveled
to get to
last night?

The desert's lion's head
& sand beasts,
Constantinople & catastrophes
hold little sway
over inherent cruelties
& madmen.

Once upon a time
we were apes
with clubs...now
nuclear weapons.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Saturday, October 15, 2016

ONE FOR PUMA PERL


I will try
to turn
a few more
lights on
& not sit
& stew
in so much
darkness.
It gets
so comfortable
in the asshole
of self
that you can't smell
your own shit--
& even if you do
you kinda like it
until an old friend
you respect
tugs on your jacket:
hey, it stinks
in here;
light a match
willya?

Onward.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Friday, October 14, 2016

CUTTING THROUGH THE FOG


I can get
pretty lost
with only myself
for company.
My secrets need
distractions.
Recently
I've had time
to go insane.
Getting there
has been fun.
Remaining there
has been hell.
Give me
your number.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

ON A NYC STOOP ON THIS DAY OF ATONEMENT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csE28cJxxNE
For Samira

Had we met
forty years ago
we'd have had
a grand time
setting each other
on fire.
It would have been lovely
to be both ignitor
& charred; pyromaniacs
of the soul; LaVern Baker's
Angel Heart.

Your eyes belied
the lust your body struggles
to contain. Brown & burning
they see too much & try
to offer so little, but
they fail to protect
or to serve you well.

We're trapped
in our own time
& by our own sense
of morality
while cowboys ride
faraway fences
& Aretha Franklin
moans in the dark.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Monday, October 10, 2016

BEING ALIVE


at sixty-nine
makes as much sense
as a deaf & dumb
ventriloquist,
a fountain hidden
in a urinal,
a virgin
giving her lover
skid chains;
a circus
of syringes,
earthworms
who get up
& beg; waves
cresting beneath
the skin.

Sense
& nonsense,
everything
& nothing.
I've been
a heedless
& sometimes headless
man, attuned to only
my heart's trumpet.

Like tonight:
a good-natured whore
helped me bridge
consciousness.
She promoted this semicolon
of calm
that allowed this poem
to write itself
before I test my blood
& take a shot for Hagan-Daz.

Seventy awaits.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Sunday, October 9, 2016

CLOSE YOUR EYES AND FANTASIZE A DIFFERENT KIND OF PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE


De Palma
in his glory:
Cassavetes combusting,
Spacek going fucking crazy.
My booming generation:
mirrors & illusions
naked and puffed up
imploding, gasping & holding on
for dear life.
Don't waste your piss,
let them burn.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Saturday, October 8, 2016

NYC WOMEN ARE CUT


by mongrel tailors
& stitched into a
forgiving city
fabric. They have
a hunting eye,
a disinterested sheath.
Their pubic hair stronger
than the cables that hold
up The Brooklyn Bridge.
Paris has it,
Rome has it,
in parts, we
have gowns & red canvas
hightops, syncopation
& sycophants, red hair,
and green hair, and purple,
and blue; no hair & bristles;
a Gershwin sycophants,
a black and white romance
next to a Sid & Nancy
blood splotched Chelsea bed.
Donegal tweeds & Irish weaves,
Jewish prayers & Baptist hollers,
lipstick and scars and ankles
twisting inside knee socks
of high school starlets;
they marry Freud & Lacan,
fashion & tease into passion
& play.
This goddamn be-bop do-wop city
birthed The Drifters & The Voice,
brought Ginsberg into Whitman's grave, gave Dylan
refuge, laid down the line for Crane,
tripped Pollock into paint, bought Dizzy a horn,
gave every faggot with rhythm and style and form
a form to fit it around and places to drink & find release,
gave black folks a country within a country and fomented alchemy secretive;
this city drips into you;
this city lets you be beautiful and brilliant and, finally, insecure.
This is Robert Johnson's crossroads;
this is where the devil makes deals;
this is the old Murderer's Row;
these are the skyscrapers taking your eyes off the streets;
this is danger,
this is delicious;
there is the hoop
and the ball
does not lie.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

Sunday, October 2, 2016

SAW ARBUS

For A's POV:

yesterday;
she was hanging
my spine
on a hook.
That was after
I had an espresso
with Frank
who had to split
for the Hampton Jitney
to meet an old friend,
(he told me),
that he was trying
to pawn-off
on someone
who never met him.
Such fuss.
A mess,
he said.
I just wanted
to get away
from Diane
who kept sliding
her hands
up & down
a mirror
that looked dead
in a fast approaching
storm whipping around
the beach almost
deserted almost
habitable.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016