Monday, December 31, 2018

DONALD TRUMP


is trying to get
a hardon
for new years.
He said
he will get
the biggest & strongest & best hardon
ever.
In fact,
he's going to Times Square tonight
to prove it.
He's going
to lie
down underneath
the ball
as it drops
while we,
the millions there
& the tens of millions
everywhere else
counts off
the seconds.

You'll never get
below seven
he bellowed.
Never never never ever never.
He's never been one
to mince words.
We'll see.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Monday, December 24, 2018

SANTA & HIS ELVES


are hung-up
on our southern border.
His elves
are hungrey
& Santa's balls
are beginning to sweat.
He's running
out of time.
Fuck this,
Santa said,
let's get out of here,
go south,
the hell with the gangs,
I'll take my chances.
Saddle- up, kids,
he belched,
we'll grab a few tacos
at that stand we hit
a few years back...
And don't forget
the presents. This country
is beginning to get
on my nerves.

No one is there
to hear the trains.

No one can see the sky
behind a moon
full of blood.

What kindness
to be got stands
idle and waiting
for a person
to drive the sled.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Sunday, December 16, 2018

BOB DYLAN


is going to die
someday,
but I hope I go
first--this way
I won't have to die
twice.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Saturday, December 15, 2018

ANOTHER STUPID FUCKING POEM FROM OUR PRESIDENT, DONALD J. TRUMP


Dear God,
please let me
win MEGA
tonight.
I promise
to only keep a Mil
and give 999 Mil
away.
And I'll slip you
a half Mil as well--
not bad
huh?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Monday, December 3, 2018

THERE'S A HERBERT WALKER BUSH


and there's a Yossarian
& a mad prophet of chance
winking in a corner. Rembrandt
couldn't have done
better: Gods & clowns
warily circle each other.
So great is our love
of pagentry
& eccentricity:
a laugh,
a tear.
Our body's crazy symmentry
duking it out
on luck's battlefields.
My betrayal
has never been
to country
but to self;
it's the only thing
making me a soldier.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Tuesday, August 7, 2018

IT'S DAYS LIKE THIS


when I'm feeling most fine,
when my body hums
with glucose regularity,
obeying the speed limits
of 80-120 defying its dead
insulin producing organ,
when words dance
like a mad Nureyev
in my brain,
when a woman
is preparing me dinner
while I get my heart
up to speed,
when tragedies zip by
without stopping...
that I most want a cigarette,
a shot of dope,
a whorey woman
with a sick grandmother,
when I want some madness
to descend
on top of my head
crashing like the cymbals
on Elvin Jone's drums;
I want something,
anything,
to show me
who the hell
I am.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Saturday, August 4, 2018

INTIMACIES


I'm sick,
I said.
My girlfriend
lying next to me
said nothing.
I tried again:
Goddamn, I'm fucking sick,
I said louder.
What else is new?
she replied,
you're always sick
about something.
Two black flies,
mad with summer heat
were either fighting
or fucking
on the screen
beside the bed;
the heat circulated
by their wings
& a cheap fan.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Friday, August 3, 2018

ALL TOO HUMAN


My ass is parked
outside Rusk,
on a bench,
cane in hand,
waiting
to begin
rehab. You see
my heart
is broken
from self-love
& other
obsessions.
But I've not given up
& so believe
I can regain
my abilities
(& desireabilty)
to hurt myself
(& others) again
one day
soon.

We're born
into this:
Addiction, Anorexia, Bulimia, Cancer,
Diddling, Drunkeness, Frigidity, and all
the other A B C's of youth, childhood rearing
and wonderment.
But this
is what awaits:
age & sickness
of indeterminate stays.

And so I watch
as life
in all its
fragility
march past
into the mouth
of medicine.
And I wonder:
do fleas
ever lose
their hardon
or Queen bees come down
with vaginal prolapse?
Are ants beset
by Alzheimers
or roadrunners arythmias?
Do lions go deaf
from roaring
or elephants
break hips from falls?
Do swans seek facelifts?

Past our prime
we all cling to failure
while little children
the world over
never notice the fissures
in the frozen lakes
and lace up their skates
anticipating an afternoon
of fun & fancy.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Tuesday, July 31, 2018

RUSSIA HAS THE GOOD SENSE


to look backwards
at my poetry--
they must feel
the rawness
of my youth
when the blood-jet
was greatest.
I was young enough
not to know
what I was doing,
but did it anyway.
I figured
I'd leave
my mistakes
for other people
to find.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Saturday, July 21, 2018

MY BLOCK


used to be hot:
Dylan Thomas drank himself
into St. Vincent's;
Delmore Schwartz
dreamt himself into suicide;
Eleanor Roosevelt funneled
her tits into a D cup
& her lesbian lovers;
Melville & Twain & Poe
scraped horseshit from their boots
& ambled and rambled about America
& God & sea journeys;
Pollock & deKooning
had fist fights
over brush strokes & pussy,
while Rothko thought of black
colors & early death while Klein
the black & white firmnament.

Now...
there are bankers
& banks...& kids
who still smell of piss
& freshly minted credit cards.
You,
or your parents,
have to be rich--
7 dollar ice teas,
& 15 dollar a pound laundries
demand no less.
"Art" is no longer a subject
but a laugh.
And I
can't get
a hardon
over much,
much less
poems
like this.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Friday, July 20, 2018

GOING HOME


is an instinct,
a drive;
it's where
the fever
started
& where
the bit
was placed
into your mouth;
it's where
your spirit
broke.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Thursday, July 19, 2018

GOD WAS STUDYING


the indestructability
of matter
when he made
the cunt;
it was as close
as He came.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

FREE


not from the monthly
menstrual cycle
of bills bleeding
me to death--
Sicilian rent,
Cable's stick-up
without a gun,
Con Ed's
air-conditioned nightmare
of need running
through tubing of oxygen masks;
not from this cage
of skin
where microbes dance
& diseases sing
their own special tunes,
& a war of instincts rage
against an overdrawn bank account
of hormones, enzymes, & synapses.

But let me not be so personal
& selfish
on this day
of all days
when celebration
fouls the air
& sits in mouths
like embers
& ash.
Think of the heron
& the tit mouse,
majestic & trivial,
bound in a joint pursuit
chained to the freedom
of survival,
and granted
by a god
they know nothing
about.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Tuesday, July 3, 2018

WHAT DO I DO


now that I'm too old
for love
but not love songs?
What if my tears
are for me
& a world
grown paunchy
& infirm?

I'm not gracious,
I know.
In fact,
more ravenous
as my stomach shrinks
from a diet of memories.

How do you feel
the first kiss
or the last
good one?
How do you breathe
that young breath
of candy-store bought powder
or an educated perfume?
How does your body shiver
when fingers,
other than yours,
unzips you?

It's time to declare
a "Do Over," a "Hindu;"
the ball hit a crack
or was taken by a strange wind
& spun
in a direction
unintended.
I want another shot
at these ancient mysteries.

And who knows?
I might even find you?
Again.
Perched on a ledge
ready to dive
& kindle
a wild river
or have nothing
on your hands
except time.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Friday, June 29, 2018

THE HEAT IS ON


There will be coat hangers
in the B-B-Q
roasting inside the wombs
of newly minted teenagers
come this July 4th;
black bodies smoking
across lunch couners
of shame; queers
hustling white-haired
Senate tourists on docks
fetid with the scum
of dreams tipped overboard
lapping its splintered spew
against faggot piers
of politics.

I'd invest
in condoms
if I could
get a hardon--
which I can't.

I would watch
the fireworks
if I could
get inside
a cannon.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

BATTER UP!


All my life
I've either
been anxiously
early or
disastrously
late.
But I've managed
to foul off
pitch after pitch
while staying alive
in the batter's box.
A few times
I've even connected
with the fat
of the bat driving
the ball deep
into the outfield
only to see it
go foul
by inches.
Yes,
it was frustrating.
But no,
I was not defeated.
I'm still alive
taking my hacks,
biding my time
for when he makes
a mistake.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Sunday, June 17, 2018

GOD TAKES THE STAND


Do you, God,
swear to the tell the truth,
the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth,
so help you (...) God?

I DO..
and
(chuckling)
i don't.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Sunday, June 10, 2018

SUMMERTIME

For PP--each in our neighborhood's jungle

To be smoking reefer
& sipping a beer
on a hot stoop
cooling our heels
is one of the more sublime favors
bestowed in this concrete womb
of a city amidst the squalls
of summertime heat.
Poems are squeezed
from the sewers;
love is laced
in this Petri dish
of hard won escapes.
Each other's dreams
drips down the sticky legs
of denim & popsicle sticks.

You live within
windowsills of fame
and home has become
a bed of thorns.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Friday, June 8, 2018

I DO


love
to torture
you
anyway I can.
The disease
of memory
makes it easy
to gain entry
& allow you
to do the rest.
Be a good girl
& open
the door.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Thursday, June 7, 2018

ONE OF THE ONES


who I made room for,
rearranged the furniture,
put on a new coat of paint.
I had to,
so much was I drawn
to her scent,
and her eyes,
brown & flecked with greens,
so much was I drawn
into her cunt
& the ways
of enchantment.
She rouged her nipples
& perfumed her body.
In the dead
of winter fucked me
in a suicide ward
propped against
my bathroom door.
We had drinks with Mailer,
in Provincetown on a frigid February night
as he tried to make her
& she demured but refused me entry
later in our wooden motel
near the sand dunes.
Angrily, I fucked her
in the ass, her submission
a false delicacy
as we tumbled
into arguments
about poetry
and maturity
and reality
and other
insolvables.
I would wait
on the streets
where I knew she walked
and ran into her
by accident
and we'd pick it up
again.
She found me
at St. Mark's Church
waiting on a Bukowski reading
and coaxed me
into the balcony
& took me in her mouth
while he read below.
We were in & out
of each other's blood
for decades.
And still are.
Both in our seventies
and not yet ready
to call it a day.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

VD


They have fucked
their country silly,
and they've used
no protection,
but it's we
who drip
from syphilis,
gonorrhea,
genital herpes
and all manner
of yeast infections.
Pus is in
our drinking water,
puke is in the air.
Penicillan is useless
against this strain
of virus; only words
as guns or cannons
will staunch the flow
of bullshit.
Vladimir & Donald,
cocksmen for our age,
living in our bloodstream
for far too long,
has rendered us blind
and truly
insane.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Friday, May 4, 2018

WHAT WOULD THE OLD ONES SAY?


No, not the graybeards
that gave name to this merrygoround;
and, no, not the Old Masters
who took pain
and oil-slicked it
with words
& brushstrokes
& notes;
and not the ones
who casually rested
along the outlines
of my skin. No.
Not them.
The ones I think about
are those who've entered
when I was most vulnerable,
blood-jet love,
and had hearts
I clawed into
& tugged & ripped
& eaten--human love
at its most animalistic,
sheets etched
with blood & semen.

I believe
I gave
so little
& robbed
so much
god-awful
time worse
than betrayal
or sins
which sit
inside
a novel's spine,
that I wonder
what would they say
seeing me obey
the rigors
of mortality?

Ancient vulnerabilities
exposed. Humbleness
dictated by god's engine.
And although I'm still fighting
all this, I know that is not
a way to go.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018


Sunday, April 29, 2018

TO EACH THEIR OWN PUZZLE


In the sometimes
frozen chatter
underneath midnight's
dripping bladder

efficiently spreading
another's honey oiled
madness of movement

onto a beaded cradle
I followed
footsteps
so easily cushioned

by last year's lies.

They wore their grins
and approbations
as easily as my female
bitch slurps her gruel.

Her pups slurping
her distended tit
biology like flowers
leaning into the sun.

It is spring here.
Buttons are opened.
The courts recessed.
Open preening
is a sport that few
do well at.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Friday, April 27, 2018

POOR MELO


is at the end
of his career;
it was good,
but it's about over
and that is sad
for any spotlight
that once blinded
but now dims
& soon poof, gone.
What's almost
as bad
is La La
his love
has split,
poof, gone.
Though I really can't
blame her--
Oklahoma hasn't got
one nail salon
to its name.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Thursday, April 26, 2018

MOVE OVER MOM...MORE THAN A SOMEWHAT RANCID PLEA


some other women
want to fuck me
and you guard the gates
like you own me.

Don't be selfish,
let them
get under the covers
too. Big bed,
plenty of space
in my head
& yours.

You've had me
so long
& I've grown so old
there's not much danger
in you not going
into the dirt with me.

And they're so young
& so beautiful
& so foolish
& forgetfull
& eager
to please.
Yes, smaller breasts,
yes, gentile minds,
yes, making statements
with their pussies;
yes, from Senagal,
from the lower east side,
Jamaica, Princeton, jail,
but they know
my heart
& where it runs
along a long line
of blues singes.

I've sponged up
your neurosis
like it was milk.
Your shelf life
seems to be past.
So before
you curdle
and my belly bloats,
ease up,
& let up,
& please
move the hell over--
I've got someone
coming over.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Friday, April 20, 2018

I WANT TO KNOW


your private moments
filled with nothing;
those times
when you are not thinking
at all,
when a hush hugs your brain,
when those mad wires
of misinformation are stilled
by natural rhythms;
when all we were
and all we are
and all we might be
calmly play
without importance
like a Beatle's lyric
out of Rubber Soul,
perhaps...
You might be moved
to treat yourself kindly,
to hold hands
with yourself
without begging
or bargaining.
You might arrive
on a hot chocolate morning
carrying yesterday's news
like marshmellows to dunk
and nibble on:
a colony of ants looking
for a new home,
Hannibal crossing 14th Street,
a tulip descending
upon a suitor's lips,
a tremble in the cleft
of a mountain;
maybe you've turned
the electronic hum
into a sleeping beast
or decided your first lover
was your best lover.
But nothing
is held
for very long
or seen for simply
being part of the tale.
We are simple stories
being told
to ourselves.
Each day
a different begining
and a different end.
With any luck,
if luck is anything at all,
we will find out
what we are
tomorrow.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Sunday, April 15, 2018

TAKE ME HOME


A first scent
of a rose petal's blush
on warm flesh
when ill;
the blood splatter
from love positioned
around the dinner table;
french toast nursed
by arthritic fingers
puffed with butter & cinammon;
fears running up & down
the broken vertebrea
of a family's spine;
nerves scattering
like mice
caught in a cat's eye;
a belly laugh
at our own imbecilities;
a warmth girding
all our failures;
and safety,
yes safety,
safety as each of us
walked a netless
wire.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Saturday, April 14, 2018

HOW CAN THAT BE?


One day
your dick
stands
at attention;
the next day
all you do
is touch
your zipper
and a bugler
blows, "Taps."
You've done nothing
except live;
there is punishment
enough
in that.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Friday, April 13, 2018

THE LONGER I'VE LIVED


the more I realize
I've descended
from a long & noble line
of idiots, degenerates,
the sick & maimed & mad
& misbegotten; a proud & frugal
fellowship of ne'erdowells,
neandethals, cons & crooks,
brilliantly out of step, awry,
lamposts drunk
with a foul & yellow sheen.
Those who bit down hard
on mother's tit and never managed
to spit it out
almost sure
the milk not spoiled
but magical
& necessary
(for balance?)

I'm near the end of it,
I think, clawing
at the earth
that will have no choice
but to take me back
& give me
cover.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Sunday, March 11, 2018

SOME READERS


have complained
that the poems
have not come
with the frequency
they expect
from me.

I don't blame them;
I have the same complaint.

A poem
is like a boil
on your private
parts--you better lance it
before your privates poison
and everything goes:
music/food/love/sex.
The puss
needs expression
in the open market;
it needs air
&eyeballs&noses&mouths
smelling&seeing&tasting.
It needs to suffuse
the reader
with its shit.

I, for one,
will feel better.
And you,
quiet as it's kept,
will, too.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

ONE DAY THE SIRENS WILL BE FOR ME


Cold & dark
I make my entrance.
Emerging from the waters
of sleep. I know
it's Sunday because
it feels like Sunday:
still & God like.
I'm getting ready
to go to work
in the Bronx
where I'll bullshit
about myself
& writing
to former jailbirds.
After a few steps
my legs start to work--
I put up my coffee;
brush my tooth;
take my shower;
pour my cup;
bring it to my desk;
open my Mac; & read
my paper.
It strikes me
how I really believe
that everything is mine
with a foolish exuberance...
then I hear the sirens...
they rip & claw & tear
Christ from the cross--
somebody else
is in trouble:
slipped
in the shower,
heart blew up,
lover blew up,
wires got crossed,
nerves gave out.
One day
it will be me
they'll come for.
I could have been
scrambling eggs
or remembering you
or chasing the butterflys
in my wallpaper...
they'll have to blow-up
the paranoid lock
on my front door
and wade through a confusion
that makes sense only to me--
the way it should.
They will try to get a beat;
they will try to figure out
why they're there & why I'm there;
they'll see if this sad piece of meat
is bleeding & how best to get me
down the slender slope of stairs.
Where I'll be
I don't know.
It's better
that way.

Norman Savage
Greewnich Village, 2018

Thursday, February 15, 2018

ONLY THE ONES WHO KNOW, KNOW


Tommy Sig
took me
to the Roosevelt,
an ancient hotel
on Madison & 45th
one year when straight pool
was still king
& those who had nicknames
reigned: Stumpy, Wimpy,
Weepy, Miz, Jersey Red,
Cicero...
Sig was a great shooter
himself--what he could do
with one hand, I couldn't do
with two. He didn't want to
hear that: Great? No,
I ain't great, they're great,
they play two speeds under God,
but I know why they're great:
They see,
and they know,
and they are able to do.
Savage, he went on, you write
a good sentence, but you know
what a great sentence looks like,
and what went into it,
but you ain't part of that stratosphere.
I might be able to handle a stick,
but I can't chop down no fuckin forest.

We sat on some rickety chairs
in a balcony thick
with smoke & kibitzers
& watched as Miz was well into
running his third rack.
He has young legs,
Sig said, he's gonna take it.
And he did.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Sunday, February 11, 2018

WHEN MY EX-WIFE WAS BORN


I was already in love
with another woman.
In fact,
I was crazy in love with her.
It moved pieces of me around.
But then,
junk took over,
and made the living
dead & the dead more real
than the living,
but the dead didn't dance
for decades--
until my ex
became my now
& now became new
& shiny.
But then,
the junk took over.
And darkness fell
on a soft
& useless
dick.
These women,
loves of my life,
were born three days
but twenty-six years
apart.
One was straight-laced New Jersey finishing school;
the other radical Japanese artist Nagasaki poor.
The common denominator
was me...
& poetry.
Always is.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

RAVENESQUE


Dark & dreary
bleak & black
chilled & drizzly,
we humped along Park
downtown & across
the bridge to score
some tea & time
& heat & eats
& maybe,
just maybe, a little sex
on our kid's break
from whatever smacked
of responsibility.
Any day, really, was a good day
for pot. But especially days
like this as the ice rain ticked
along the windows
& pinged & ponged on the roof
while a young friend,
but old lover leaned
past my shadow & into the folds
of our laughter as the bridge
& her cables rose before us &
the fog seeping into the ground.

Some days
are made for pot,
& some days for dope.
Rare are the days
that give coke a good name,
but anyday, everyday,
is an alcohol delight
if the saloon is dark
& those who bottom there
know you well enough
to leave you be.

We got out
into the mist
& Amy paid him.
There was a skinny Rican
we knew selling
Panamanian Red
by Hoyt & Bergen:
good count for the price,
& rich sweet earth tasting
pot. But we still needed
to throw a few sevens: he
had to be there; the reefer
had to be there; & a cab
or car service needed to drift by
or be found. Everything in this life
is a matter of timing. Edgar's was piss-poor
and he paid dearly; that day
ours was better. How was yours today?
How has your life gone?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Friday, February 2, 2018

WHAT A DRAG...


I've cornered myself.
Shorted myself.
Stuck myself up.
Outfoxed myself.
Listened
to myself
go on
for too long
saying too little.

And I'm doing it again.

A dunce-capped fetishist
thinking
I'm in a new place
just an old body;
a fool
on a fool's errand;
a squandered hedonist
loving moments
imagined, but soon,
soon enough,
this place will retch
from fears familiar
to the touch,
a mink claw
of specious need.
I will know
this place
soon enough;
it is the place
I've known
soon enough
all my life:
home--for tourists
& other strangers.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

I STUCK


to her neurosis
like a velcro strip--
no matter
how many times
I tried
to extricate
my foot
from my mouth,
or her ass,
it held fast.
I pulled
every muscle
in my goddamn body
and have been
in traction
for the past
three years.

So much
for therapy!

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Saturday, January 27, 2018

WHAT WAS BETTER


than stealing
an afternoon
from school,
playing hooky
in anybody's crib
whose parents
were gone or
couldn't give a fuck?
Somebody
always had some reefer;
Somebody
had a fistful of Black Beauties;
Somebody
had a down or two;
Somebody
brought a pint;
And everybody
had a pack of Bambu.
You had vinyl
or an FM radio.
Everybody posed.
Everybody was cute.
Everybody was handsome.
Everybody was experienced.
Everything revolved
around us.
We yak yak yaked
up an afternoon,
scrawled our own
hieroglyphics on rolled parchment,
tongues outpacing words,
plans fevered by amnesia,
outstripping notions of resources.

And what was worse
than our fears
catching up
to our coming down
and going home
to arguments
around dinner tables,
slaps & accusations;
unable to eat
from the speed;
thick with coats
residue & saliva
& dreams shaped
like a coffin
of the mouth.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Monday, January 22, 2018

PAUL BLACKBURN


smoked Luckies,
drank whiskey
100 proof,
& ogled jailbait
on Coney Island boardwalks
& in slant-eyed city saloons.
We got along fine
until the Luckies killed him
in '71 as
they're killing me in 2018,
but it was all good then.
Hell of a poet,
too.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Sunday, January 21, 2018

EACH MOMENT


has its own brain.
And each moment knows
what you want
to see
& what you can't.
How it knows
is life's mystery.
Each moment
has no fear
of ever
being found
out.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Saturday, January 20, 2018

IT WOULD BE SILLY

One For the Old Geezers

to try
& lie
to you
now.
You know
I'll try.
I know
I'll try.
I promise
to resist.

Some
have noticed
a diminishment
of poems
of late.
Some
have even
inquired.
No,
I tell them,
it's the gods
that destroy
& make men mad,
not I. I am ready
I assure them
and am merely
waiting like any
good Christian
to receive
what is given.
I tell them,
take heart,
I still want to fuck
every woman I see,
& more importantly,
they want to still fuck me.
(I'm sure they know,
as I do,
that's only half true).
Yes, I still imagine
nipples naked with need
of varying length
& sweetness & color;
yes, I still taste
different heated nectars of emissions.

And the words still come
but slower; better,
perhaps, but slower.
And memories perfect
in their lies, pile up
on runways waiting
for this infernal fog to lift
but stubbornly clings
to the sides of wings preventing
full flight:
fully in control of exceleration,
the Porsche obeying my instincts,
leaning into a corner at fifty,
a magician's inner stroke
of light's genius;
the proper word to light
the inner demons of a cueball
& bank life's mystery & madness--
a sweet narcissism
of self-serving
excellence.

There will be
more poems,
good & bad
after this;
how many
is not for me
to say.
I'm sure
"slowing down"
is an "art"
too, but one
I haven't
mastered
yet.
I've been too busy
trying to work
on it.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

OVERNIGHT


the rivers freeze
& the sand deepens.
Once, you were able
to do things
like tie shoelaces
without thinking
& now
you would prefer
not to think,
but have to.
There's nothing
to be done
but adjust
constantly.
I could offer advice
but like myself
you wouldn't take it.
This is the wind
from vacant lots,
the straw in the hair
of heros.
These are words
like tombstones
in the mouths
of mumblers.
Everything
is a beginning
of something.
Everything
is an end
to something
that came before.
There is little to be done
with the dead skin
except remember
how vicious
& vibrant
we once
were.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

Monday, January 1, 2018

THE BRAND SPANKING NEW STRATEGY FOR THE CRANKY OLD DOPE GAME


Yes, young man, what can I do for you?
the candy store owner asked the bright-eyed boy.

I'd like, let's see--
(his eyes were salivating)
--a few packs of those M&M's,
10 Bazooka Joe's,
& 2 bags of Dr. Death.

OK son, that's going to be 20 dollars for the M&M's,
10 for the Bazooka Joe's,
& 50 cents for the good Dr.

The boy fished out the bills,
counted them off
& forked them over.

Now remember son,
take the gum
out yer mouth
before you honk-up
the Dr. Death.

I will, Mr. Fishbein, see ya.

See ya, Harry, and say hello
to your parents for me and
that cute little sister of yours.

Mr. Fishbein was a perv,
but he always had the goods.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018