Saturday, December 30, 2017

A PLAIN SPEAKING, HONEST, NEW YEAR'S EVE PROPOSITION/RESOLUTION TO AN ASTUTE, INTELLECTUALLY GIFTED, HO, WHO SEES RIGHT THROUGH ME


I will bring you all my
candied misery, my doubts,
all

my darkest moments; I'll gift
you with my sheared heart; are you
seduced yet

by all this
selfishness; this dupliciity
of newly minted ice; a Brahm's Requiem of French horns...

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Friday, December 29, 2017

FUCK WALTER MISCHEL


and his marshmellow test.
Who in their right mind
would wait a year to eat
two marshmellows when
you can eat one now?
And that's supposed to tell me
who will cure cancer
and who will die of cancer?
Gimme the marshmellow
now. I've been
a heat seeking
guided pleasure missle
before I knew what pleasure was:
put a bag of dope,
a scotch neat,
a jelly bean or two or three, or a hundred thousand,
or Milky Way,
a piece of ass, a pair of tits,
three of a kind, or Royal Flush,
even a parting of lips
in front of me,
and I'm a gonner.
How about a warm apple pie
cradling a Hagan-Daz scoop of vanilla--
I'd crawl over my mother
to get next to that.
Wait a year!? Are you outta yer mind!?
I want to get the fuck outta me now,
motherfucker. What is pleasure about?
I want to lose myself; I want to get lost:
Lost in wine, in women, in poetry, in song.
That is how you find things
out. You lose control, you go crazy...
for a second, a week, a month, years.
Unfortunately,
most don't.
What horrible lives
they must lead.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Wednesday, December 27, 2017

LIBIDOBESETZUNG WHILE ON A CAROUSEL OF SHIT


Your pussy rides
the middle horse,
the horse
that rears up,
while death sits still
at your side
behind you
& in front.
I cannot
get past them
& think:
I really
don't want to.
For where would I be
if I weren't digging
a grave with you
or without you,
inside you
or pushing
against the steel
of your heart?
I know now
what happens
after a man finds
a cunt that fits--
he waits
like a child
for the brass ring
to come 'round again
while the grave beckons
my name to be written--
like breath
on a mirror.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

WHAT A CONUNDRUM!


The Pope
invited me to Rome.
Donny
begged me to come to Mar-a-Lago.
Who,
I asked myself,
should I dis--
The child of God, or
the father of God?
Instead,
I babysat
Jay Z's kids
figuring:
hip hop artists
need a break, too.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Sunday, December 24, 2017

JESUS IS LOOKING


to being born
& I'm looking
for a whore
on Canal Street
so I won't die
in this godforsaken world
in an unforgiving town
on the outskirts
of mental illness
& "there's a medication
for that."

Heard they moved uptown,
an old alkie said
in front of the mission
on Lafayette. Ain't no action here,
except for old fucks
like us.

Where uptown? I inquired.

How the hell should I know?
Do I look like I'm mobile
with money and care
if I ever get a stiff dick again?

I needed a bowl
of wonton soup;
the wind
was picking up,
the temperature dropping,
and I was lost
in thought and
old remedies.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Thursday, December 21, 2017

MY ARTHRITIC FINGERS,


caked with age,
will try
to unwrap your gift.
Be patient
with me.
It's not
infirmity,
but only
a savoring
of the moment
so long
in coming;
I do
so love
attention.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Monday, December 18, 2017

WHAT TALE WILL I TELL


about that crap game
I was too long in
and whenever
I wanted to cash out,
I made a number
or found a buck
and rolled again?
What will I ask
when I get up there
and have a chance
to straighten this out--
all this confusion
all those lost opportunities
all those mulish times?
What will I ask Him?

What would you ask Him?

Don't really know...
Don't really know the good it'll do.

C'mon, what would you ask?

Well, I guess like I said:
Why'd you keep me down there so long;
why'd you keep me in the game?

What da ya think He'd say?

I don't think He'd say a goddamn thing.
I don't think He knows either.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Friday, December 15, 2017

#METOO SANTA, YOU PRICK, #METOO


Santa was on the run.
He'd just come offa a two week drunk
& just about made it
from his skid row pad
to his yearly department store hustle
without vomiting
when a five year old tugboat
pounced on his swollen knee.
Sweat began to drip
into Santa's beard.
He twitched & the tug
blew the whistle
not knowing Santa had the DT's
thought he was diddling her.

He took his sorry ass
to The Salvation Army
where he froze his ass off
swinging a bell like Quasimodo,
ho ho hoing
until he thanked some 14th street tootsie
who tossed a quarter in his jar, "hey,
thanks baby," & was told to take a hike.

Santa needed a drink bad
& convinced Mrs. Claus to front him a buck
& help hook up those imbecile reindeer to the sled
thinking he'd get a jump on the 24th & off he went.
Little did he know that all the chimneys
on the Upper West Side were greased.
He slid down the first one like his balls were on his back.
A bear trap's teeth was a kiss from his scrotum.
He looked into the candlelit darkness;
a hundred little eyes were ablaze
with revenge & madness; they started throwing Barbie Dolls
with teensy weensy dildos in their little fingers;
Ken dolls with contraception devices in their fists;
Cook books, nursing school brochures; panties
& training bras. It was the lesbo Village Of the Damned;
it was partisan politics; it was America; it was
Christmas.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

A SWEETER SOUND


I've never heard
then wind escaping
before a turd.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017
4:25 a.m.

Sunday, December 10, 2017

TAKE WHAT YOU WANT, GOD IS DEAD AND HIS MOM WENT SHOPPING


The world will soon explode
from grief.
Young black & white girls
expose fecal tunnels of love
on CraigsList for cheap
tradeoffs of minimum wage
allowing the breath
of truck drivers
& university professors
to reach into their innards
& steal what never was:
youth & possibilities.
Russia is mad
with memories
& China with rice futures;
India keeps trying to grow
deserts of food
& the Congo beats drums
of failures & fortunes.
A crippled falcon
cannot be seen or heard
as the circles grow wider
above Christmas sales
& Hallmark bromides.

Our guts get pulled out
struggling with biology
as our little experiment
is unraveling.
Our only meal
is eating pussy
or sucking cock--
damn the nutrients.
Money & pleasure
should be the faces
on bills of exchange:
Caligula, Nero,
Mick Jagger.

Mom will be back
soon...unless
she gets trampled
in the rush
to be first
when the store
opens. She wants
an X-Box.
She's determined
not to lose
another son
that has yet
to be
conceived.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Saturday, December 9, 2017

WE USE WHAT WE GOT (every little bitty thing) THAT GOD GAVE US


like guns
& pocket mirrors;
like a hairy fist,
or a fast thumb;
like tits
on a '55 Cadillac's bumper
put in a push-up bra,
or a chiseled jaw
bracing a British accent;
we use our parent's wealth,
or food stamped passivity.
We use our reputation,
the written word,
stuttering,
or long legs leading to mysterious fortunes.
We play humor, twist pathos, dance with angels
or devils or landlords or tax collectors--
all that dross,
--secrets & solitudes
and the desperation
of others;
vanity/poverty
& holidays of blue suicides,
big dicks & tight cunts
snapping shut or dribbling
out the clock;
sophisticated offhandedness,
construction sweat,
a beaten fighter's courage,
a hooker's scars,
a priest's purity--
what we got,
is what we use.
I do it.
You do it.
We all do it
in the service
of love,
like the worm,
like the snake,
like the slug.
Everywhere.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

C'est Le Guerre


A million lips & words
& fingers & smells
& false starts;
a hundred thousand zippers
pulled
up & down
a half million times
with hairs caught
in steel teeth &
two million pimples
popped a half billion
fumbling & rumblings
& phones falling out
of their cradles
by silence & midnight
forays into forests
of motives & maybe
a urinary infection
or two beside a pregnancy
& cold linoleum abortions
decided in extremis...

& now
little
laughs,
but
safety.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Friday, November 24, 2017

SOFT FUEL


is the touch of a woman
on my skin. They shatter darkness
inside my soul
& stretch
what cannot be
into a homeostasis
of hope.
How often have they
injected a casual touch
into a crowning validation;
how they allow me
to preen or crow
without pretense or prevarication.
They have lent me
courage with a glance
& stemmed the fears
of a heart gone mad
from reality.
Sometimes,
I wish to go inside them
& sleep, nestled,
curled up,
in their natural bed
of curlicues
& mysteries.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Saturday, November 18, 2017

COME ON OVER HERE, YOU


and plug me in;
percolate me;
heat me, get me
hopping; slay me
and fillet me
flash fry
& sauté me;
splay me open
like a stuttering
question mark!

I've been without
magic & fear
for too long.
I've been a sober man
walking a drunken line.
More things
than a dick
needs watering.

Yeah, that feels good.
Yes, that too.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

SLAVE BLUES SERVED ON A THANKSGIVING SLAB


She absorbed
my breath
& odors
on a 270 pound frame;
she withstood
grunts
& false starts.
She felt the drip
of foul Vodka sweat
& a thick spaghetti strand
of mouth drool
pooling around her nipple.
Somewhere
far off
Sonny Boy sang
the blues
of men; his harp
pumped blood red
trapped
by women
of color
by instinct;
she, too,
trapped
by young deliveries
& aborted safety
finds America
in God's trust
& open-school nights.
Everyday,
another stranger's flesh,
everyday,
the same dinner;
everyday,
a cold,
a missing tooth;
everyday,
a cheap cologne;
everyday,
a budget
breaks: speeding ticket,
toothache, a discharge.
I finally finish,
pull out
& fish
for green slime
in a pocket that hangs
with shame
over the chair.
Here, pleasure, thanks.
She tucks it
next to the pocket knife
& pepper spray.
Anytime, she says,
just call, you're
fun. I better run.
Have a good holiday.
You, too.
Sonny sang Bird.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

A DESPERATE RESPONSE TO A DESPERATE POST


There is
a place
where only
you may go
for comfort
& madness.
You need
& desire
no others;
you crave
only
your own
need
& your hands
& your fingers
that are
educated
by that
need.
But do not
go there
now. Wait.
Wait
until
you begin
to
moisten.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

PACK YOUR SHIT


You've got
six months
to live.

Non-negotiable.

No,
this is not
Hemingway.

No,
this is not
art.

Yes,
this is
cancer.

(mommy)

(Mommy)

(MOMMY).

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Sunday, November 5, 2017

THE WATER BUG'S DRESS REHEARSAL


scuttered across
linoleum outside
my door
as I left for work
this morning.
It was an ugly fuck:
big & fat & black & brown
with whisper feelers
going this way & that
finding its way
into a kitchen
cabinet, water drain,
bathroom piss stained
shit stained soul stained
corner.
Goddamned motherfucker
as my sneaker clad
two hundred and sixty pound
frame found his beetle
back and stomped the shit outta him;
his liquids flew,
underneath his broken body,
flying to his sides puss green,
purple matted latched upon
the nearest wall's borders.
Bam: back broken, spleen exploded,
lungs busted-out, brain mashed,
eyes popped, ears filled with slime,
arms and legs shattered, asshole
popped. He was gone before
he knew
his name.

I lifted my leg--
just the way
I'd like to go
someday, as I went
to the trains
instead full
of mercy.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Friday, November 3, 2017

EVERYDAY YOU PASS BY


everything you need
to know

about everything
there is.

II

Residues.
Kick ball
then doorways.
A darkness
is at the top
of the stairs,
but money too.
Need
is your gravity
today.

III

Dreams
in a book
bag.

IV

I gave you
a hundred,
I know
I gave you
a hundred,
I only had
a hundred
and now,
I don't
have it
anymore.

V

I fell
in love
when I
was little
and now love
sucks the life
out of me
as I grow
impatient.

VI

One should look
harder
at what
one knows.

VII

Her dress
has its first stain
of journeys
to come.
His lips
hang
over his teeth
like shadows.

VIII

Slugs sun
in the summer
slime;
they have
no job
yet.

IX

Vespers
from a Harmon
mute; a jazz
musician
fingers
the hem
of a garment
whose mother
doesn't know
where she is:
this circle,
this time,
now.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017



Saturday, October 28, 2017

MOST EVERYTHING


bugs me
these days:
a vein
resistant
to liquids,
a candy colored
blemish
of fear
in the cheeks
of a baby's smile.
The passage
of years
have set
my teeth
on edge:
The price
of toilet paper
or the toil
of buses
wailing
from the grim
silence of
travelers
risks
gunfire
and chafed
hearts.
My woman
keeps to
herself.
She has prepared
a dinner
she doesn't expect
to eat
with consequence.
Luckily,
I do not
come home.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Sunday, October 22, 2017

A SUNDAY SERMON


In my cock
I have
the nuclear codes:
Fuck it.

In my cunt
I have
your mother's touch:
Enter it.

My cock
validates
your worst suspicions;
my cunt
grants reprieves
& erases all doubts.
They allow you
to believe
you're connected
while granting
a few precious minutes
of death.

Let us pray.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Thursday, October 19, 2017

WHY I'M HERE


is obviously not
what I thought.
It's not to get
my way, but to
find a way;
it's not to stroke
an inflamed
and engorged
flabby ego,
but to leash it
to reason; it's not
to get my cock sucked
with whomever however
I choose and not to offer
my arm to the blind
& crippled at crossings.
It's not to sing
praises to the Lord
or His parasites or care
if Mother Mary gives a fuck
over what I'm doing or done.
It might be to listen
to Coltrane conducting
a Latin Mass or marry
words or wonder
why the Blackbird
is hungry today?
It might be to breathe
heroin fumes off concrete
in the Bronx or rub
an amputee's stumps?
It might be
to have dinner
with Puma
& talk baseball
and loves stranded
on third?
These are all legitimate
concerns.
Certainty
is for the dispossessed
who know
they need to eat
or pee.
Those,
like myself,
who have the luxury
of play, can be artists
of cowardice--like
wondering where
all that living goes
when it stops.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Monday, October 16, 2017

WHO KNOWS?


where they are?
or who they're with?
but I have
my suspicions:
one,
I'm pretty sure,
is fucking
a Cuban donkey
on some Havana side street;
another lies
under the sheets
in a psych unit
on a mountain side
in St. Moritz
waiting for a soulful skier
to fly onto her ward
& pirouette around her privates;
and still another,
lost in a memory dream
crosses a wet street
lifting her nun's robe
across her father's sternum.

Imagination dictates reality.

Most likely,
all the old ones,
and ones yet to come,
are battling
old battles.
Reminding themselves
they've misunderstood
themselves & their muses;
that ambivalence balanced
on the tip of her tit
gives her
enormous pleasure
and her sacrifices,
while tragic,
are trifles
as a white girl
sings Mississippi
juke joint blues.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Thursday, October 12, 2017

LIKE AN OLD MAN

For M

I fell asleep
on my couch
on my birthday
without warning:
one minute
here
next second
gone...
and then
she came.

She came
with a body
by Cezanne
and a Rabelaisian appetite.
I stuffed my dentures in,
wiped my chin from drool,
and got down
to business.

A few hours later
she left
no worse the wear.
I, on the other hand,
was richer by half,
smelling my thoughts
& fighting the curtain
coming down
too soon.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Monday, October 9, 2017

FUCK AND FUCKING WITH SEVENTY


When I was feeling-up Susie--
twirling her pink nipple
like a juggling fool
and inhaling
her adolescent powder or
gently chalking-up a pool cue,
or releasing a sixteen pound
black ball that rolled
down a slick alley and nestled
into the one/three pocket
turning five into five hundred,
or downshifting a Porsche
into a corner
doing fifty--
I hardly thought
about age or
infirmities,
those little gremlins
of egress and transgress
and impasse.

And now, suddenly,
here I am.
Most of the stuffing
come out
like an old pillow
and I still don't think
about what I can't do
but what I want to get done.

Tomorrow,
I will have been born
for the seventieth time.
And although more happened
during the first ten births
then my last sixty
(if what I hear is true),
and won't remember the final breath,
(if what I hear is true),
I have all the splendid mess
between. The gods
have been more than good to me,
they've been
generous...and
I want more.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

IN MEMORIAM REDUX


Tom Petty
& 58 other poor fucks
bought it
the other day.
No memo was sent.
No warning.
No admonition.
No nothing.

Today,
when you go
to your mailbox
& find nothing
you'll understand
life
is nothing else
if not fragile
& quixotic.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Saturday, September 23, 2017

I WANTED TO SEE YOU


in the Carole Lombard
white silk
nightgown
dragging your sex
into an arid bed
marking your territory
with wet spots
against the blue night
as sound retreated
against your pleas
and my heart raced
with fears &
fearlessness.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Thursday, September 21, 2017

A GREAT POEM HIDES


in the thumb
of a hitchhiker,
or the greed of a Queen
bumblebee; it's
a dollar found
hugging a sock
underneath
a torn pocket
of a barfly
after last call
is called.

It could by a map's mistake,
or the dried out tit
of a riverbed. Perhaps,
the first or
the last word
of a tortured phrase,
or a sentence
outliving a period.

The gods
are wise.
They know
that this
could be
a great poem,
but that's
up to you.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

THE RUSSIAN ARTIST


I've always been
a little envious
of the Russian artist.
How to avoid
the whip & the pistol,
the ice & the cage
while sticking out
your tongue at your
would be masters heats
the vein's blood,
but makes the hand cold
& clammy.
Of course,
this is being written
by one who's never faced
a firing squad
or a censor,
whose back & hands
are unscared
& untroubled
by midnight knocks
& flashlight eyes.
My bravery
is limited--
like noting others
who are.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Friday, September 15, 2017

I GREW-UP BRONX


and brown
and stingy
like paper cuts.
My zip code
was a garbage can.
Felix fucked me
against the steel
subway car
in a slum yard he was signing in
that night and I was somewhere
between a thumb
& forefinger and
I don't know nothin
about cumming but he did
cause my fingers dripped
with him & I never did
go home
cept to bury my own self
as winter sat
on my knee
and all the graves
whistled at me
in the dark.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Thursday, September 14, 2017

PLANNING AHEAD


I will masturbate
before I take him
for a walk to get
some air.
We both
need it.
It will calm me
if I see him
& plan my future
betrayals.
I am seasoned
in this
& ripened
for younger
less experienced
hands.
It's time
to give back
to the earth
a daughter's
bounty.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Monday, September 11, 2017

YA CAN'T SMOKE


in hospitals,
sanitariums, on beaches,
in pool rooms, movie theaters,
restaurants/diners/dives,
in subway stations or
airports. Ya can't smoke
in churches or temples,
or saloons nursing
your last call
while hugging the wood;
ya can't smoke
in apartments and offices
and trailer parks and boatyards;
and you can't smoke around babies
and the near dead
and the demented and deformed
and spiritual and con men
counterfeiters, confabulists
contortionists and
the forsaken.

But you can
& are encouraged to
contribute to every condition
that gives rise
to disturbance & disease
that births that lazily uplifting cloud
of tubular and cylindrical sooth saying
and soothing.

Yeah, sure
I'll put it out.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

MEDITATION


The only drawback
in this life
is that
it gets in the way
of living.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Sunday, September 3, 2017

MY BROTHER, THE VAMPIRE


He was good
at a lot of
things,
but he was
the best
at sucking
the blood
of anyone
he crossed paths with
until they withered
& snapped
like brittle twigs.

suck suck
sucksucksuck
and suck
some more.

Now
he has no teeth
to speak of,
& two kidneys
about to quit
on him. They
were given him
by the master
of death: dope.

Like all good vampires
he had his reasons.

He will get up
tomorrow morning
& go to a methadone mill
to drink his two hundred & twenty mgs
of madness as sick & slow & slovenly
as he is.

I gotta give him this:
if nothing else
he's a professional.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Saturday, September 2, 2017

THE LOVE OF LADIES WHO BURN...SCALD...AND SCORCH


Joni sings
in the shower
while I play
in the damp news
of yesterday.
Coffee bounces
up from sleepy beds
of conflict
& balm
as her moist skin
exudes fragrance
like rare orchids
in an overheated
hothouse...

I'll read
to Toni
tonight
her own words
from the mouth
of a white man
drunk
on her rhythms
of the heart's coal
& diamonds...

There's Simone,
both Nina & deBeauvoir,
pointing with acid tongues
new tastes in extremes
of language glued
to the affairs of men
doomed & tragic
and forever
joyful...

& Billie
of course
turning & twisting love
around her tongue
until, even I,
can hear it
for the first time
again
& again
& again...

And then
there is
you.
The one
who hums
inside,
constant,
a metronome
of want;
the blue tangle
of legs
& after sex smoke
from cigarettes
drifting lazily,
as gentle as wisps
drawn from Miles' Spanish horn;
who I whisper to
in the dark embers
of the night.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Thursday, August 24, 2017

ZOMBIES ALL

For George Romero

It was 1968 and
I was early in my junky run:
I'd just fallen in love
and had gotten married,
honeymooning with myself
at The Waverly theater
watching Night Of the Living Dead
at the midnight show.
I wasn't really "watching"
as much as I was nodding,
my upper body bent over
like a question mark
searching
for an easy transition
between here
and there.
I had yet to digest
pleasures
& make sense of "love"
& "food," & "need,"
& "desire." "Escape"
had me
in her talons.

Before I knew it
I had killed
another night.
I went back
to Coney Island
& stopped at Nathan's
for a frank.
I thought I'd cheated
death and felt proud
that I'd found
the place that fitted
almost like a cunt
without the dialogue.

The dead have grown
and are insatiable.
There is never enough
pleasure to go around.
Pass the salt.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Monday, August 21, 2017

THE ECLIPSE FLIM-FLAM


You wanna see
real darkness?
Look
into the mouths
of others.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

ETHNIC ALZHEIMER'S


You forget everything--


except grudges.


Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Sunday, August 13, 2017

A MODEST SOLUTION


Have Ivanka
suck some street dick
& let Tiffany take notes.
Move Eric
& Donny, Jr
into an SRO
& give em 16 bucks
a month in Food Stamps;
force Barron
to choose
another name--
these are easy to do.
What's a little harder,
but promises to be
more interesting,
is moving all "the swells"
on Park, Lex, & 5th Avenues
to Pig Hollow Mississippi,
Crapalachia, the inbred mountains
of Kentucky while shuffling
some pig slop Alabama/Arkansas/Georgia north,
into the main line of Boston,
Philly, Riverdale, Scarsdale,
overturn Montana into Louisiana,
spill the bucket of blood that's Texas
into Maine's aortic valve...
you know, Mongrelize! Blood
doesn't turn up its nose;
let there by blood jets of poetry.
Shake it up baby,
twist&shout Isley Brothers style.

Can this American flag bullshit.
Give it a rest. Stop talking.
It's bad, it's stale, we've seen
this movie. Sleep with a new mate.
Smell a new smell. Taste something
that awakens your tongue.
For god's sake:
Make It New.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Thursday, August 10, 2017

SOMEWHERE TODAY


a little boy will be running
from a death grip
of a father's hands
and a little girl
from his cock.
Somewhere today
that little boy
will begin to marry
his mother
over and over again
and that little girl
will bend
to the black heel
of a German boot.
Our task,
& our terror,
is to unravel
the dream.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

I'VE ORDERED A WOMAN


from Amazon:
used,
dog-eared,
creased,
& underlined.
But you know men:
they make a million mistakes
when it comes to reading
women; they treat
the important trivial
& mistake madness
for difficulties.
I'll read it
myself
and let you know.
Meanwhile,
I choose regular shipping;
I want to have
& want her to have
the juice
of expectation.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

DON'T FUCK WITH ME


Today I read
that they now
can edit/fix/fuck with
whatever is diseased
by altering some genes
in the womb.

Don't.

The world
would die
if this poem
was stillborn.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Monday, July 31, 2017

IT IS EASY


to make mistakes.
Look
at my life
and yours;
what we see
and never saw,
what math
cannot hope
to compute.

What is obvious
is this:
we are supposed
to get it wrong.

How else
can we go on?

It is why
I fell in love
with books
& ideas.
Never having
any idea
of its meaning.
Never understanding
how many lies
we have
inside us.

What luck
I had
falling
over myself.
What luck
in finding
those at
the 8th Street Bookstore
who were making
the same mistakes
and teaching me
this eager
listener.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Thursday, July 6, 2017

ONCE AGAIN I AM AFRAID THAT I AM DOING THIS ONCE AGAIN AND I AM AFRAID I AM DOING THIS


thinking
I am in a new place
afraid
among old rivals
lost, but once here
in the comfort & confusion
only repetition can bring
bouncing against walls
which hold me
fast or threaten
to throw me out
& in spite
of a brain
too feverish
in its ice grip,
too estranged
by all
that's familiar
I am lulled
into the belief
I've always been here
as it conforms
to my fears
of knowing everything
about nothing
as I place
my dusty satchel
full of stale air
I am overcome with sleep
but I can't sleep
so pace,
& lie down,
& pace,
& lie down,
& pace,
trying to find sleep,
the sleep I've slept
forever.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

JUST SAYIN: YOU WAZ ROBBED


You picked your own pocket.
Shorted yourself.
Wrested defeat
from the jaws
of victory.
Thrown out
at home
by the crooked arm
of reason; grew fat
on lies
until you believed
the truth
of those lies.
You were born
to dance,
my dear,
to trip
into my arms,
to laugh
the demons
into
submission.

I waz robbed,
too; I was 57
once.
The next minute
I was 69.
The way I figure it
you fucked me outta
three years.
And fucked yerself as well.
Put your finger
in time's bellybutton.
Make it baby,
make it green
again...

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Friday, June 30, 2017

SHE HAS KEPT HER DISTANCE


w/her body,
but her mind
cannot help her
from knocking
on my door.

Such a waste

of good flesh

& the time
it takes
to devour it.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

I SEE COUPLES KISSING


quietly with
their eyes.
They have to
let each other
go.
I felt that way,
too, with you
saying goodnight
and going
into my bedroom
or my bathroom
in the morning.
Much blood
is spilled
in that
space.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Monday, June 26, 2017

ARE YOU A WHORE?


I ask a little girl
who passes me
in the hot summer air.
She displays
a peacock's plummage
on top of her head:
streaks of green/blue/magenta/red
hair, black leather studded garb,
black fishnets ripped & torn up
up to her cunt & cheeks of her ass,
nose rings/ear rings/lip rings
snarl from her face.
Her mouth curls
as if I'd said something wrong
or beyond the pale:
Go Fuck Yerself,
she says.
A most reasonable request,
I think,
for a much
younger
man.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Friday, June 23, 2017

LESSONS LEARNED


She had the word "Vacancy"
tattooed above her mons Venus
in a motel yellow,
the letters
strangely glowing.
A few of them were dimmed
by the passage of time
while others
were nearly invisible.
How many travelers
have stopped there?
I wondered.
And how many
were still missing?
But I was O so tired,
and needed a bed
for the evening,
maybe longer.
But this time
I'd packed light
and didn't have much
to carry
or unpack.
I gave her
my driver's license
and a credit card...
and waited.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

I COME BEARING GIFTS


I bring you all my shit
and put it in your hands:
a hundred years of shards,
a library full
of tears, laughter
the wind catches
on its breath; these
are pedestrian
I know, but they're
just the foot soldiers.
Here's Johnny Too Bad
by Taj,By the Rivers
of Babylon, by Jimmy C;
Crime & Punishment,
which we've cultivated,
& The Ivy Crown,
which we haven't.
Miles
of music subversive,
and as dangerous
as Botticelli's gold
fuck rays streaming
to the virgin's womb;
vagabond's ramblings
& scrambled eggs
in forsaken diners,
thick slabs of bacon,
coffee hot enough
to know your tongue's there.
I give you old smelly corpses
of uselessness; dreams
brokered by cruelty; a city
of maybes...

My Medea,
I come to you knowing
I must be killed...
but not yet,
baby.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

I'M NO FOOL


I tell those
I try to help
in the patch of hell
I work in
in the Bronx.
They've been in jail,
institutionalized,
or homeless
most of their lives.
I never
lend money,
or give out cigarettes
on the first date,
I say up front.
I wait
until I'm lied to
a few times
before blessing them
with my largess.
They nod,
as if they understood,
and settle
right in
to the old
& comfortable
rhythm.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

I'VE NEVER BEEN VISITED BY THE DEAD


Maybe
they've been busy,
I've reasoned,
lighting the runways
for those
about to take off,
or land?
We all have our jobs
to do--like writing
this poem
in the dark.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Sunday, May 28, 2017

THE SONG OF THE GOAT MEN


White beards
in my bones;
swimming in a mosh pit
amidst realities entrails.
I am Nietzsche
circumcised. To Athene then
carrying blanched barbs
to a trapeze way station.
And there I balance
a dull watercolored world
of sculpture & science
with drunken rapture
saturated in music
birthing its mongrel son: poetry.

I want my madness
to possess your madness
which thrashes and pulls
the leash near snapping.
If I know
where I am I am
nowhere.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Saturday, May 13, 2017

VODKA


Don'tcha love
potato farmers?
Tilt up
the glass
& taste
Fyodor's blood,
Mayakovsky's phlegm,
the drip
of Turgenev,
the mad laugh
of Gogol,
the fever & grace
of Baryshnikov,
Vygotsky's reach...
The liquid breath
is clean
anger
only clouded
by rants
of those possessed
by a holy negation;
too holy
to be written,
too sacred
for screed,
balancing a universe
drunk
on its axis
& lonely
for its
children.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

TAKING A LEAK IN URINALS MADE OF PYRITE


All men peek
at urinals
at men
who stand
next to them
surreptitiously
checking size.
Their eyes
on a swivel
as mine were
the other evening.
O, my,
I said
to myself:
Trump,
on my right,
had a dick
like a wrinkled spigot;
Vlad had the head
of a marble.
I turned
to my left,
I turned
to my right
& zipped up
slowly.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017


Tuesday, May 9, 2017

UNDER THE VOLGA RIVER


flows tributaries
of blood.
And that blood
flows through
the heartbeats
of dissidents.
And those dissidents
are the only ones
keeping Russia alive.
Remember that,
all those who think
those stains
on the shoes of dictators,
are freshly applied polish.
We can do more
than just bleed.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

NARCISSISTS CHIRPING


1.

I love me.
I love me too.

I really love me.
I really love me too.

I really really love me.
I really really love me too.

I love me truly...

I love me well....

I love me wholly...

I love me broken...

I love me spent...

I love me fractured...

I love me most...

Takemedomewantmeholdmekissmethrillmebuymefeedmefondlemefuckmedrinkmeingestme

2.

I wish to be
on intimate terms
with distance
and want only
the beginnings
of love affairs.

3.

I have only walked
with those who've walked across
ponds where the ice is thin
and have flirted with blackness
more than once. And who caress
their genitalia absentmindedly
and often.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

SHE WAS A PROFESSOR


of the springs; a doctorate
between the sheets.
She wrote her thesis
on positions &
the various openings
of pleasure.
I, at the time,
was a quick study
but a quicker shooter.
She gave me
an "incomplete,"
and I never
made up
the work.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Sunday, April 16, 2017

DOMINATION


Stick it in my ass,
she said.
Huh? I replied.
Hurry,
put it in there.
I dunno,
I wavered.
She was a smelly old whore
full of promise
to this fifteen year old
idiot full
of doubt.
I had no idea then
that one of us
was really full
of shit.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Saturday, April 15, 2017

EASTER, 2017


Christ rose,
opened his eyes,
looked around,
& went back
to being dead.
Fuck this,
he said,
& rolled over
to find
the cold side
of the pillow.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

THE CHEEKS OF HER ASS APPEARS


an inch below
her short
shorts.
It's supposed
to enchant or
entice; it's supposed
to be sexy, but this
escapes me.
I'm unusual,
I admit.
I'm attracted
to scars
& scowls;
the turn
of ankle
or phrase;
a Dada depression
or suicidal
surrealism.

I like my women dressed.
What happens later,
behind the curtain
is Greek
to me.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

NIPPLE WEATHER


encourages
the urges
of infants
in bodies
of men
propelling mouths
towards milky heads
of nails
in this jack-hammer
civilization...

It nearly broke eighty today
with more heat, more baby talk,
more drool
coming
tomorrow.
Evolution
through fabric.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Thursday, April 6, 2017

SURRENDER,


my dear. Hoist
the white flag
and engage
the beast.
The beast
who marvels
at your diseased
heart and
the coarseness
of your peasant soul.

I promise
we'll waltz
to Brahms
and serve
each other's
flesh in a
Freudian hothouse.

The creature
straddles a fence
and all the boats
point west.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Monday, April 3, 2017

SOMEBODY


has to be love starved
and somebody has to inject
formaldehyde into the veins
of corpses. Somebody
has to be in Alberta
looking for a dried twig
while somebody is looking
for a drink
in an SRO in LA.
Somebody has to have dialysis
tomorrow morning and somebody
is pissing honey tonight.
Somebody will wake up in Paris
and think it's Greenwich Village
and somebody will wake
in Greenwich Village and think
it's hell.
Somebody will be defeated soon
and somebody will be lucky rich
and somebody will turn dance
into defeat while somebody hunts
little girls in Bushwick.

We fill-up our space
with what is given. I've worked
the apple cart. My horse huffed
and shat on Houston Street. I've
held a muffler to my throat
against the East River winds.
I've seen streets cobbled
against the hooves. I am
somebody when I'm inside
someone, but someone, a somebody,
when not knowing who that somebody
is. The fracture
is love.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Thursday, March 30, 2017

PRIVACY...AT A PRICE

For all my Russian readers...

There's me
buying a vacuum
on Amazon; there's me,
again, watching
a gorgeous chick vacuuming
thirty-five cocks
into her mouth
on my Mac.
O, look,
me again
buying a children's tea-set
on Target
for my granddaughter
who lives on Crete and me,
once again,
an hour later,
copping some oxycodone
from a Mexican outhouse pharmacist site
on my smartphone.
I feel so important
being tracked
& looked after,
like a president
in a palace.
And really,
there must be
better porn,
& better drugs,
& better prices out there
and why would I want
to use all my precious time
finding them?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

I'M FULL OF SHIT


and full of words.
They go together
like...
Life & narratives...
Experience & poetry.
Text & testifying...

Some stand
on their heads,
thumbs up their ass.
I'll take the soapbox,
my tongue flapping
in the breeze.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

MY JOB IS TO DREAM


words: bread & marbles,
apricots & onions,
moles & Minotaurs.
A shaft of light
dancing across minnows
wet with belief
& the smell
of religion.
Honeybees leaning along
the Queen's thigh
suckling a thickening liquid
sprung from the head of Zeus.
How else
to reconcile
the people
& the rocks?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Friday, March 17, 2017

A BAD LUCK WOMAN

"Many a good man has been put under a bridge by a woman."
--Henry Chinaski

and she's all mine.
She was sick & suicidal
when she found me.
Just the kind I like.
I got her well
& she thanked me
by twisting the knife
into my innards
like she was twirling spaghetti.
She was Faye
& I was Jack
and this was Chinatown.

I couldn't quit her.
I couldn't quit her
before it cost me my job,
my money, my sanity and
nearly my pad--eviction notices
blanketed my door. Her absence
bothered me more than anything real could.
But I fought
the good fight
until her boil
became a pimple
that I sometimes,
even to this day,
absentmindedly rub.
My poems
as my life
doesn't concern her;
she cares
only if I still care
about her; only
in that regard
she's like
the rest of us.
I do not say
this is good
or bad but is...
until yesterday...

I saw that someone
from Canada peeked into my blog.
I had that feeling
that we all have
from time to time: anxious,
troubling and worse still,
curious.
I contacted the three readers
I have up there.
No, they said, not them.

Later in the a.m. I was woken
by a stiff white light
shining into my eyes & the outline
of a monster with a peaked hat.
There's a fire, the voice said,
sorry to wake you like this, but you have to get up and out; too much smoke in here.
I reached for my sweats and sweatshirt and slippers.
I walked out into my hall where six or seven other firemen were doing their thing.
I noticed my lock was busted, its entrails hanging by a thread.
Everything's OK now, one said, sorry about the lock, but we had to get in.
Yeah, I said, it's OK.

I was saving money to buy a comfortable chair and light stand so I could read and watch whatever.
That's all gone: 400 for a lock and house call; New York's a stick-up without a gun.
She probably knew that. I don't know how but
I know she knew
that.
Chop Suey anyone?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

IT CATCHES YOUR GUT


like a fishhook
baited by an old
& patient angler
& deftly cuts you
and out spills
an intestine's worth
of memories; a bowel
of inane blather; a fly ball
lost in the sun.

And there you are
flopping around
on a wet deck
blood smeared & useless
save for your goddamned history:
almost rolling a 300; making it
with a heavy legged waitress
at the end
of her shift; endless nights
and endless breasts and endless beasts
that you commanded and told where to sit
& when...and now
nothing, being tricked
by the cheap lure
of loneliness
as another organ
gets pulled from you and you
can hardly even moan.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Sunday, March 12, 2017

NO, STAY THERE


she said
with her hand,
light, yet full
of urgency.
My mouth
wrote
curlicues
inside
her privacy.
I signed
my name
with my breath.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Saturday, March 11, 2017

SATURDAY NIGHTS ON A CONEY ISLAND BEACH


we'd lean our backs
against the concrete bunker
built during the second world war
to look for ships & subs
who might try to fuck with us,
and our shoulders and arms
would touch and I'd pass her
the joint
and then the bottle
of wine and we'd look
into the blackness
and tell each other
secrets no one else knew:
her mom used a hair brush
on her while my father choose
a belt buckle; he ripped farts
in the middle of the night
waking us up while her mother shacked
with a family friend next door.
I ran my hand along her thigh
and marveled at this easy intimacy;
how I hid and ran and dodged
and she told me I didn't have to do that anymore...
and neither did she.

We sauntered along the boardwalk
to Nathan's and had a gloppy Chow Mein Sandwich
and a Beef Bar-B-Q bun for a buck
and shared a large fries for 50 cents more.
The night had sharp jaws and edges,
but we had our own space, enough
to feel safe within as she slid her hand
through my back pocket as natural
as the stars coming out while the salted air
alerted my nipples and I reached over
and put my hand inside her shirt
and found one of hers and she jerked
and laughed and I laughed and I knew
I had some more pot in my pocket and
would not be going home
for a long long time and might
catch a beating for that but that
didn't enter my mind.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

WRITING


My hands
have wrinkles,
seven hundred
and eighty four of them
to be exact:
770 poems,
3 novels,
1 memoir,
and 10 short stories.
You might say
I have honest skin.

If I don't finish
this poem
I'll stay
at 784
and never get
another wrinkle.
More than that
you can't ask for.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Thursday, March 2, 2017

THE IDES OF MARCH COME EARLY THIS YEAR


I'm not that strong.
This does not come
as revelation
simply fact.
If she had rung
my bell
one more time
I would have
opened the door.
She's the navel
of pleasure/pain
in the dreamer's heart.

I would have eased
the needle's tip
into an old
& trustworthy vein.
It would have slid in.
It would slide under
hardened flesh.
It would have slaked thirst.
And it would have
made true the bargain's lure:
find what you love
& let it
kill you.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Sunday, February 26, 2017

THERE ARE TWO THINGS YOU MUST NEVER EVER DO:


One:
Answer your phone;
and two:
open your door
after midnight.
Unless
you're a fool
or
you're in love
with your past;
or
angry
at
your future.

or

love to fuck
with danger,
misery,
pain;

or

just plain
stubborn.

I'll wait...

there's somebody
on your line...

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Saturday, February 25, 2017

SATURDAY NIGHT ON THE GERIATRIC EXPRESS


"I'm gonna get that limp lookin
sorry-assed piece of meat up...up...up,
yeh here me, up!"
She sounded like The Fifth Dimension.
"Here, take this," she said,
and pushed a few pills at me.
I took em.
It still might be a lot of work,
I cautioned.
"Work. Shit. That's what I live for:
Challenges!"
She was young. Energetic.
I was old. Nearly finished.
We made a funny couple.
The devil was in
both of us.
I might outlive
everybody
she whispered
when it was
over.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Sunday, February 19, 2017

FIRSTS:


Asking Maxine out
for a hot fudge ice-cream sundae
when I was six and summoning up
the courage to take her hand
on our secret path back home;
swimming without my father's arms
underneath me & feeling the waters pull;
surfing on asphalt on a tar spun Brooklyn street,
the training wheels off
with only my own power & balance to guide me;
a hardball sliding into my Rawlings oiled glove
and hitting a liquid smart drive on the fat of the bat;
having courage in the darkness
& the high spun arc of magisterial wide screen technicolor
coming on at once like LSD kid style; melted popcorn
oozing between my fingers licking the tips;
the first time my dick moved straight up
all by itself;
the first time I mastered making a bridge
so the pool cue slid easily between my fingers;
the first time the ball touched nothing
but twine and the swoosh it made;
the first touch of silk;
or the smell of my dog wet
from the spring rains;
the first time I saw Corinne
and moved toward her without
knowing why; the first smell
from a mimeograph machine or
gasoline pump, paper solvent
or horse manure or man sweat
after a summer's football game
on the beach; the first pull
on a stick of reefer or opium pipe
and the snake that slithered up
my spine and around my shoulders
and up into my brain;
the first time I realized Coltrane
or Monk or Miles or Billie or Nina;
the first time I knew I really existed
and found the keys into Joyce's pocket;
sighting Diane behind a glove counter & knew
how love can come from behind and mug you.
It has been a long slow kiss
to the fates and it has been
sublime.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Friday, February 17, 2017

SOMEWHERE IN CHINA


one person,
in a country of 1.4 billion,
checks my blog everyday
around 11, 1130 a.m. to see
what's up.
Undoubtedly,
he
or
she
is the hippest
cat
or
chick
in the land.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Thursday, February 16, 2017

PACK YOUR SHIT


Mr. President.
It's only been a month tomorrow
so you can't have much to take:
a bathrobe (maybe two);
a toothbrush (maybe two);
perhaps a thong.
You've already fucked-up
more shit than everyone
who came before you; you'll only
fuck-up more if you stay.
But take heart:
you've made the history books:
most fucked-up president ever.
That's what they'll say.
You'll be the one
they make comparisons to:
You think he's fucked-up? That ain't nothin. I was around when...
And you'll have your portrait; your windswept "do"
will be next to Lincoln Kennedy Washington Roosevelt
and your skinny scrunchy lips and beaver mean eyes
will frighten the shit out of school children
taking a tour with Melania who never noticed
you were even gone.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

A PALL


has descended
over me; I struggle
to do anything
except move my fingers
over the keys and let
whatever flies & lands
in my head create the lie
of exercise & movement.

Depression is gifted
for the young;
melancholy
for the lovelorn.
I am neither.
I am like my words:
lugubrious labored
leaden lonely.
A shroud covers
my TV, anchors of folly
slither over its face.

I'm waiting for the earth
to turn over
us and the intrepid worm
become our jailers.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Saturday, February 11, 2017

JEWISH EXPOSURE


Some women
have been shielded
from Jews
their entire lives.
They've come
from the backwaters
of Michigan, Wisconsin,
Mars; somewhere where
no circumcisions never
needed to knit
or unravel.
They've never been
around charming Jews,
tough Jews,
shrewd Jews,
smart Jews
in one chosen package.
They've never been romanced
and seduced and
lied to and
liked it.

I've met
and bedded
many.

I'll get this;
you leave
the tip.

Our eyes caught
and locked.
We knew
what came
next and it didn't
have a name.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Monday, February 6, 2017

A LONG POEM FOR SHORT-TERM MEMORIES


Strength tests
for a blubbery country
its body grown old
fat & full & sloppy
from corn syrup
& sedimentation;
muscles dripping,
arteries slogging,
reflexis dull
& slow and full
of shit.
The light,
if ever there was some,
is a brackish yellow seepage,
it flickers and burns
out. It happens
to all of us: those who dine
on caviar & gherkins,
or those who spooned Mulligans Stew.
It happens to University profs
with their dainty organic salads
and long-distance truckers
sucking down Big Macs & Red Bulls.
We've been content
to have let ourselves go
and segment ourselves for the sellers:
pilferages seven days a week;
footballbasketballbaseball non-stop,
homeshopping, mafia housewives, LA Hair, lock-ups
of the toothless and hopeless and helpless; penny-ante pilferages
of grapes or nuts or toothpaste or toilet paper while we wait
for the weather--rain or a half inch of snow is enough to send us
into paroxysms of anxiety.
Do you need a dick pill?
A nervous pill?
A vaginal cream?
How about sugar pill?
Nosespray?
Neuropathy? Can I sell you a car that can see behind itself?
Can I help you park it? And what about those tits on that anchor woman?
Where is that handsome young man who wants to tell me about Medicare?

The fabric has weakened
as predicted it would.
It is neurosis which has flown
in a widening gyre
while the falcon
trains its eyes
on us.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Thursday, February 2, 2017

THE LOVE SONG OF DONALD J. TRUMP


Let us go then
you & I
as the country is chained
around a megalomaniac's thigh
like sheep
about to be
buggered.

Let us go
through flaccid streets
under silken sheets
of puffed bravado
and stubby fingered falsetto
to where madmen wait
sucking an empty space
like prunes within a vacated bowel.

In the room the blowhards come & go
Tickling each other's assholes.

There will be time, there will be time
to grow a dick
and fornicate
with a stranger tonight...
or each other's mate
even when their there...or ain't.

No, I am not Nikita
nor was meant to be,
am a jester and a saint
but would not hesitate
to drop a shoe
upon his pate.

We have lingered too long
celibate and lick the salt
upon the state.
So roll up
your sleeves and part your hair
and wonder how our fine creatures
only sit and stare.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Saturday, January 28, 2017

A LITTLE MORE DOPE, PLEASE


Got enough kindness,
thank you very much.
Food, uhuh,
got plenty of that, too.
Money? OK
with that.
A woman? You kiddin?
I'll pass.
Got my four walls,
some paper,
and a Bic--
if I need em.
It's dreams, man,
that I'm short of;
and I'm getting old-old,
so old that my old dreams
have gotten tired, too,
and can't make the leap
into my head
without some help.
So...
pass the dope, wouldya?
I've got the spike&spoon,
I've got the cotton&belt,
a glass of water rests
on my table & I've got the will
to sleep&encourage
rebellion
damning what separates me
from the dimming light.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

MARY TYLER MOORE IS DEAD


and I can't say I'm sorry.
I spoke to her once
while she was in Canada
filming some bullshit
and I was holed up
in my Greenwich Village pad
bloody and bandaged and minus
four toes and still trying
to dream and she
was in a phone booth
with a second or two,
she told me,
between takes.
I'd tried for years
to get my memoir to her: Confessions
Of An Uncontrolled Diabetic.
I tried through my doctors,
her publicist, her husband's colleagues,
and finally through her assistants.
The years were 1982 through '85
and she was living in the San Remo.
I was convinced that between the insulin shocks,
insulin shots, piss testing, food deprivations,
depressions from sugar highs, anger from the lows,
a commonality of Brooklyn, doctors, fears and
foreboding, she'd get behind the work if
she read it, though I never particularly liked
her work: too pretty, too perky, too sweet,
too American, but, hey, she held some ins
to my outs.
She was worth a shot.
Getting published,
getting validated,
getting out of this thing
called "life" was worth
whatever lies
I had to tell.
An actor friend of mine
knew one of her assistants
and so I traipsed up to the San Remo
and dropped the book off for her
with the militarily clad doorman.
After a year
I forgot about it.
And then a phone call
on a rain slicked day.
She was probably sorry
she didn't get my answering machine.
After my hello
she told me who she was.
"Sorry," she said,
"I can't get involved with this."
I just held the receiver.
"Best of luck," she said,
and hung up.
I could hear her voice catch.
I heard, "I'd really like to, but..."
kinda tone.
I'd suspected the work cut too close
to Mary's bone and wasn't surprised
a decade later when she wrote about
her alcoholism and the less savory
parts of her so called charmed life.
"Fuck her," I said at the time
and went back to what I did best:
hide
behind words
& substances.

I might have another eleven years
to go--give or take--and am not displeased
about the arc my life has taken
before and after Mary.
Redford must have sensed, too,
her drunken selfishness and filmed it.
Really,
it was her most honest role.
I should know:
I've played it
once or twice
myself.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Monday, January 23, 2017

WITHOUT THINKING


a hand finds
the back of my neck
and casually rests
soothing the wrinkles
inside my head
with her fingers
brushing
the tops of drums.
How lovely
is that in
the early evening
as the madness of the day
airs itself out
and a gentleness
eases itself in--
like listening to Al Green
Backing Up the Train.
You pray a little
you will never speak again
or hear any language that can't
be sung.
You know,
of course,
you've done nothing
to deserve this kindness
except live
through another day
of hell.
"Baby,
that feels so good,"
you want to say,
but don't.
Instead you note
the passage of time:
why it feels this miraculous
at seventy
as it did
at seventeen;
and there I am
still bewildered
at how women know
where to touch you
and when.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Friday, January 20, 2017

THIS INAUGURATION DAY IS A DAY


for Monk,
Thelonious
that is; it's
a WELL YOU NEEDN'T day,
a NUTTY day,
a STRAIGHT, NO CHASER, day,
a BLUE MONK, day.
Turn off
the news,
the TV.
Do not
read.
Forget
what you know.
Give yourself
over
to the dots
that can't be
connected,
but
(somehow)
are.
Arm yourself
with a chuckle,
a knowing grin.
And once sated
move forward
into the breach
and take up
the fight
again.

Norman Savage
Bronx, NY 2017

Sunday, January 15, 2017

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE


Working with the addicted,
the deranged, the borderline,
the schizo affective, the bi-polar,
the recently released, incarcerated,
the twitchy, the nervous, the traumatized,
the treated mercilessly, the tortured,
the stigmatized, the one's whose first word
was no, whose innards boast the picket fences
of fear, too early and too complicated and too monstrous
to look through and too briar rich to get through without
bleeding to death is almost as hard
as loving them.

I should know:
For fifty years
I've made a living
off them & tonight
I'm taking one out
to dinner.

I myself
am one
& divide
against
myself
as tides
come in
& try
to drown
me.

There is something rousing
about jousting with impossibility;
something stirring
when the strings
are struck
in the hearts
of masochists.
Sometimes
they even summon things
of beauty.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Friday, January 13, 2017

SCRUBBING THE STAINS


cannot help
but leave a stain
but that stain
is smooth
like a chalk outline
around a dead body.
It's been hard
work but I've had help:
my ex has never called;
the nut from the north
has kept her distance;
I've had no uninvited
knocks in the middle of
the night; my parents
are dead and I've buried
"the bad
with their bones;"
and my brother
has trouble
of his own
that I,
unfortunately,
can't help with.
All in all
this past year
has been better
than good
for me; so good
that at times I believe
something bad is close
at hand.

I still make mistakes,
plenty of them, but
they are new,
too.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

SOMETIMES IT'S SO STAGGERING ALL YOU CAN DO IS WEEP


There is a point
rusted inside you
that is reached
when words collide
with your history;
they freeze
& bleed
into your next breath.
Time dissolves.
Pain
which was muted
& runny congeals
& engulfs.
You are lost
inside your flesh
desperate for air;
your defenses
useless;
your rationalizations
in neat boxes
of misery;
your reason
banished; your control
dismissed
as folly.

Hold tight,
my friends.
This visitor
doesn't stay
for long
because
it never left.
It's just reminding you
it's hungry.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Thursday, January 5, 2017

"LOADED"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NwKZ9ZsgGA

Been listening
since new years
forty-seven years ago;
I was twenty-two &
loaded myself: my guns
were loaded; my body
was loaded; the times
were loaded & The Velvets
were loaded. I thought
I was dangerous I thought
I'd change literature I thought
I'd fuck endless women through endless nights and take endless drugs through endless dreams and thread my way through this endless life and bend this life to my will...
nothing bent
except me.

I still listen
to "Loaded,"
but now straight
as a steel rod
without its steel sister;
my gun
shot blanks
and life
was my master
while I
was its
masturbator.

Here, have
a listen.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

IF YOU LIVE LONG ENOUGH


it all comes back:
skinny ties,
berets,
goatees,
unfiltered cigarettes,
jazz,
existentialism...
all that stuff:
"Pour soi,"
"En soi,"
"Hell is other people,"
"condemned to be free"...
you know,
RESPONSIBILITY
FOR YOUR OWN ACTIONS kind of shit.
(And maybe another world war,
and devastation death rubble
and bread lines soup lines Maginot Lines
and despots dictators demigods de facto
and foolishness & fucking
and more than a Guernica abstract
and bad teeth & misery so thick
you won't be able to piss
without a bishop or rabbi
to direct the stream.

(And
I could be wrong.

(But
I'm not
am I?

(And you don't think so
either,
do you?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

STEALTHLY, A THROWBACK MOVES FORWARD


She was
a white-gloved
street whore;
Picasso's mistress,
Isadora's partner,
Baudelaire's muse,
a lower east side
gutter hugger
when there was
a lower east side
to fight the chill
inside a world
full of spoons
& white cotton.
Now she fights
off dementia &
boils by forming
words in a darkness
of her own making
& singing to lights
of her own choosing.
She's pulp
in all its
glory.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

Sunday, January 1, 2017

THE YEAR CHANGES, BUT THE UNDERWEAR REMAINS THE SAME

For Puma, with love...


Men still follow
behind women
quietly
as they are led
into supermarkets,
clothing stores,
restaurants,
movie theaters,
looking aimlessly about
as they submit
to the leash,
if not the lash,
of the female
& lean
into their own
confusion.

Jesus, too,
must have noticed
the Jaws of Death
when he followed
that old whore
to her corner
and watched her
throw-out her line
& began to fish
for her daily bread.
He looked about
trying to believe
he was concentrating
on something divine
but knowing it was
rejection
that had him coming
back for more.

Too often
I find myself
reading ingredients
on the backs of cans
while the woman I'm with
moves forward
with our lives.
I've been lucky
having always someone
who knows
how to dance.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 201