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