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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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