FORT KNOX, CHRISTMAS EVE, & MOM

Ft. Knox
was easier to heist
than was my mother's passion.
Her cunt defied
global warming,
& her heart was tighter
than a frog's ass--
and that's waterproof!
She was so cold
that at the dinner table,
(if & when she made dinner),
we wore gloves.

You might be thinking
this is a strange poem
to be writing Christmas Eve--
on any "Eve" for that matter.
But to those,
who've never been in a madhouse,
or behind a wire
in a police cruiser or lock-up,
or who've stood on a line
hoping to be medicated,
or a cop-line
hoping to be medicated,
or in a hospital bed
hoping to be medicated,
to those & for those
I reply:
good luck to you
& may the bordom
be kept at bay
from the wolves
that at midnight howl
& prance
under a blood red moon.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

O SHIT, NOT ANOTHER CHRISTMAS

'Tis another season
of bullshit
is upon us.
In that joyful spirit
lemme say up front:
This season
I want to get
more than I want to give;
I want to have
more than have not.
I feel like sitting on my ass
& shoot Santa in the balls
as he tumbles down my chimney
from the trip wire I set, and laugh
at his sooted face
from all the carbon.
Today, though, Santa
doesn't have to do shit--
Amazon will gladly bury you
in inertia & debt.
I'm of the age
where most of my lovers have died
of boredom,
or are imprisoned
in their very special & deserved hells--
thank you very much.

However,
if I'm being honest,
I miss those heavens...
& those hells.
In fact,
I find myself
wanting to be Italian.
I want to be wrapped
in Grandma's lasagna,
swimming in escarole,
shrimp scampi, pasta this,
basta that. Uncle Tony
sending deft farts
into mouths paralyzed with laughter.
I want to be hugged-up, wanted,
not because I'm me,
but because I'm part of them.
Yes,
it's true:
I'm a wandering Jew,
& I'll wander into any family
on this day that reeks
from joy
whether they throw matzah balls,
or hamhocks, or all 7 fishes
around the dinner table laughing
or cursing who & where they came from because
what is in their marrow is their essence...
& that essence is love.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

THE UPTAKE OF GOING DOWN

Rivers run
through the cracks on my mirror.
Black spaces between dreams
have been taken hostage
by reality's sideshows.
Once we wore baby powder,
and now we smell from time's stamp.
Not that it hasn't been fun;
playing hide 'n seek with myself
required courage
and the blessing
of stupidity; seeking
what I couldn't see; listening
for that half note
that made sense...
like the foreignness
of my family's dinner table
when I was too young
to understand what war was
let alone how
to negotiate a truce.

Flowers call to the sun,
but I'm no longer a flower.
Instead, I'm the petals falling
"with a dying grace," mocks my awkardness,
and "so softly as to not make a sound,"
rebukes my moans
as I prepare
for what might not be:
a dress rehearsal.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

JUST IN TIME FOR DINNER

I try to run my food consumption
like a good German runs his railroad:
ON TIME! Not just diabetes
nailed me to the cross,
but Ma & Pa whose world
didn't revolve around the sun,
but around a Lazy Susan.
But tonight, o boy,
tonight I was gonna feast...
Dine... Eat!...Grit-up! GO
FUCKING CRAZY!
I was sick at sticking
to strict diets & marginal fare--
not because of medical dictates,
but because my pockets were bare.
Tonight, they'll be no Heinz
baked beans/salami & eggs,
or Campbells Tomato slop
& Keebler Krackers crunched
on top like fake grated cheese;
and no peanut butter
& bullshit. No, not tonight.

Now, I ain't no fuckin chef,
but I can burn a little;
I can fry shit up
& make it happen
in the cast-iron skillet--
finish it off in the oven;
get that top char happening
& the bloody ooze
from the inside running
into that baked potato
slathered in butter
complemented by fresh
iceberg lettuce hearts,
Jersey tomato wedges
lapping up imported hazelnut
olive oil & Tuscany vinegar
& a hint of Dijon mustard.
O, man, gimme a glass
of Pelligrino with a lemon wedge
& call the undertaker--
I'm ready to go!

My man, Ramon,
cut me a one and half inch aged Ribeye
& I carefully culled the rest.
Exiting, I began to taste the dinner.
I started to salivate; drool
threatened to leak out a side of my mouth;
I made sure to swallow.

I prepared the salad & dressing,
heated the oven to 350 & inserted
one Idaho marvel which,
after 20 minutes took, cut open,
& spooned in an ungodly amount of butter
into its soul
& proceded to heat the skillet.
After dressing the Ribeye,
I flung a few drops of water
on the skillet--they popped,
& hissed; and when I lowered the red slab
of cow into the pan,
it sizzled.
The aroma of exceptional steak hitting
all the right senses.

Three minutes laer
I was sitting at my table,
watching the NBC evening world news with Lester Holt,
about to take a mouthful
of heaven...
when they came
relentlessly:
Hemorroids & rectal suppositories,
vaginal itches, penis carbuncles,
COPD & emphysema & breathing tubes,
toothless people talking out of their necks,
rasping gasping for a reason to live,
chair lifts, stair lifts, soul lifts,
menstration pads, piss pads, shit pads,
brain pads...Alzheimers leaking memories
and a thousand yard stare, Parkinsons
shakes, bi-polar, tri-polar, quasi-polar...
diabetes drugs--a new one an hour,
Pepto Bismal, diarrhea, and all manner
of discharges...
or just plain hanging on
by a fucking thread...all tied up
& made pretty by those beautiful & happy victims
by a beautiful red bow
around a Toyota for Christmas
with a Golden Retriever loving you up.
My balls went into a vacuum;
my butter curdled;
my steak stunk;
salad wilted;
Pelligrino flat & foul tasting.

I got off my ass & out.

The old Italian, Stromboli,
had the Yankee game on;
Judge coming to the plate.
Hey, Nick, gimme two slices...
and wait--put some anchovies on em;
make it to stay.
It was only the top
of the fourth
with the Yankees down a run.
All in all
not bad, not bad
at all.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

JUNK SICK

Maybe it starts with a flutter,
a body vibration
in the tips of your fingers
or a ripple behind your neck.
Perhaps it begins with voices
vying for space in a motel
where the No Vacancy neon
has lost a letter or two.
Maybe that's followed
by a craving for stillness;
or maybe there are ghosts
in your morning coffee;
or perhaps there is a silence
of love
and its perils:
your mother's nipple, once,
as big as your thumb,
now receding from view,
the slam of a door
and your lover's footsteps
retreating and getting fainter
as the evening's rush swallows
what you thought was;

or maybe it starts
with some success--
accidental or not
and suddenly you're naked
standing in a forest
of doubt, surrounded
by fear,
a feeling of fraud
corroding the wires
to your heart, disbelief
punching your worth silly;

or perhaps it comes
from nothing, a nowhere day
in November, idle thoughts,
dreamless, stagnant,
until you look, unknowingly,
at a vein
in the crook of your arm
scarred over
from how many times you've traveled down it,
hundreds, maybe thousands of times,
sliding the spike in
like getting into well-worn slippers,
and you remember the ease and the warmth
of the amniotic highway,
suckling, murmuring, nurturing
a life you blessedly know nothing of,
yet know where the key to all things
is hidden.

You now are able to locate the ache
and lean, ever so gently,
into remedies
that can take seconds or years
as your unconscious churns
to fulfil. But no matter--
you have nothing
but time.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

THE VIEW AT 72

For my brother, Bobby: ...as a result of an afternoon conversation, 10/23, where we tripped down the road to Hell, but found a marriage made in heaven...A random fragment of that conversation.

It feels like shit, I said,
if you wanna know the truth:
legs, shot;
lungs, shot;
heart, stoppard by pinpricks of lunacy;
dick, marcescent, safe
as a steel condom
molded to the shaft,
weighing heavy
in the mocking mirror's grotesquery;
a bunghole corked, a runway
stacked-up with cancelled flights
of fancy...my brain, though,
and I'll be a sonofabitch,
still revs past the red line.

What else do you wanna know?

Those?
Those are paint chip stalacites;
when I'm working, getting this shit down,
they threaten to behead me,
forcing that ground control asshole
to get the flights out
before this soul crushing ennui
denies my reprieve: fucking
with words.
Because that, my brother,
has been the one thing that works,
that still works,
against the honest vows
spawned from bullshit & bravado.
They've allowed me to look
for angles, for impossible
bank-shots; to see behind
dead ends & rear ends & time bends
& warped trends; they've allowed me to wait
behind lies for easy preys
and rare sightings; they've made sense
of nonsense. They've given me shelter,
a vacation from life, if you will,
from solitary--
And all I had to do
Was wait...and bite
into a Lucky Strike
between pursed lips
for the next good word,
for the next good line.

Simple
ain't it?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

GERARDO

is my barber now,
though he'd cringe
at that blasphemous label;
a "barber" is an "Anthony,"
or "Tony," or "Mr. Tony,"
a "John," or "Pete," who
for a buck and a quarter,
took an electric shaver,
dull pair of scissors
and comb and worked his way
through the overgrown landscape
of your skull. You sat upright,
staring into the mirror watching
your locks fall to the floor
joining the graveyard of colors there already.
Afterwards, he slapped
some Witch Hazel on your neck, raw
from the shaver's red & rusted use,
threw some baby powder around, &,
if needed, pomade on what remained
of your scalp. There was always a sign
in their shop: If You Leave,
You Lose Your Place. Nobody
moved a muscle, ever.

Gerardo is my "stylist." And Gerardo
is beautiful: slender as a reed,
Peruvian, young, gay, musical.
Dancing with a pair of scissors,
wearing a chiffon skirt
above tight black jeans,
he's a delicate filigree weaving
his way, snipping here, measuring
there, balancing as he moves
his hands to the rhythms inside
his skin & my cranium, in his silk black shirt,
eyeliner, rouged cheeks, wearing
a rakish fedora tilted rogue
with mystery and menace
on top of his head.

From what is my slumped
& slouched posture, I love
to watch him work: a gunslinger
with silver scissors
bringing a spent soul
back to recognition.
You know, he says to me,
you look better
than last time.
You're full of shit, I reply.
No, no, you do, I mean it.
Gerardo takes my hand
& leads me back to a sink
where he shampoos my head
again. His fingers press
upon my skull & neck & shoulders
pressure...which releases pressure
and fifty years of the sublime
& the hideous.

I pay the buck twenty five
to the "hostess," but Gerardo
refuses my tip
each time I offer
to now when it's just a formality.
I would like my hair
to grow faster
while my years
ease up.
But that
is not
how it works,
and how it works
still escapes me.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

OUT OF IT

You need a day
like I had today:
fucked-up
and feelin fine;
free from my history
and those dark voices
that whisper & tongue
your inner ear.

Not a wink of sleep
and a few extra pills
for all the pain
real & imagined,
ingrained in a cycle
of anticipation,
did the job
of snatching from the jaws
of gods and demons
billows & breath
as a fog disappeared
into the earth.

There is that space
that waits for you.
Listen for it.
Trust it.
It is the only place
they can't take from you--
and they never could.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

OLD MEN WITH FISH EYES

The Chinese shack is closing;
ageless men stack beaten wooden chairs--
4's & 6's & 8's
--on table tops.
The skinny cook,
a #2 pencil of a man,
dribbles ash
as his ducks & chickens rumble
over the blade.
A nick of blood pools
into the soy. How many fingers
make a dish?

A lean Grayhound idles
at the curb's edge.
It waits, tail pipes
leaking dreams and
impossibilites.
Plastic red bags
holding oranges &
midnigt transgressions.
A fat blond whore,
mascara covering her fallen lash,
leans into her ride
rife with determination,
uncovers an almond cookie
and bites into its core;
stale, the sonofabitch
fucked me, she thinks.
It is only the first
of many lies
in the first of many hours
she will have to endure
before the first of many truths
becomes clear on Monday:
the crap tables are unforgiving
for hot women
of limited
resources.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

USE WHAT YOU GOT; USE EVERY ITTY-BITTY THING GOD GAVE YOU OR THE DEVIL SOLD YOU; USE YOURSELF UP

1.

Use it like a gun
or a pocket mirror;
use it like a hairy fist,
or a set of fast thumbs.
Use it
as if your mother is hiding
inside you,
clocking your action,
judging, finger pointing,
wagging her stupid floppy tongue
cursing your infidelity.
Your memories
are simply oiled up
& begging to be caught.
Catch them.
Let the wind
drive them into your bones.
And let your bones rattle
and scatter in God's celestial crap-game.

2.

Make love to your disease--
if you're lucky enough to have one;
it pleases the gods
who thought it wise
to grant you a gift.
Embrace
its confines,
lick the edges
where, as all fugitive lovers know,
lies the sweetness of evanesence.
Your disease
will make you a better liar,
a better fabulist,
a better spinner of tales;
in short, a better artist.

3.

Winter has leaned early
into your crib
and froze your sap.

4.

I am
an old bull elephant
in must...

5.

Since I was a young boy
the fears have come
with regularity; I hold
an empty can of Coke
in one hand
& a Lucky in the other.
Neurosis drips
over the side of the bed
& pools in the can
with the ashes.
They are all useless
except as instruments
like music.
I have sung
the sad meat of my bones
and now gnaw the gristle.

I'll take some hot sauce with that...
make it to go.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

A SATURDAY NIGHT HO-DOWN AT McLEAN'S

Lowell cslls me up,
invites me to this soiree
at this joint he's chilling at.
Tells me there's gonna be
two hot smart babes, Anne & Sylvia,
who can't wait to meet me.
Bring some of your stuff,
we're gonna read a little,
consume some flammable liquid,
and then--
God only knows.

Beautiful & brilliant they were.
Two chicks,
from the right side of the tracks
and the far side of chemistry
that ate pain like candy
made choosing impossible:
Daddy/Lady Lazarus
The Black Art/The Ambition Bird;
pleasures multiplying
with each turn of phrase;
a void opening
into the yawning mouth
of a womb-like cave.

I'm fucked now,
they're killin me,
I tell Lowell
before I split.
"Wait," he replies,
"I can always
get you a room."

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

STEAM HEAT

A serpent's hiss
in the pipes
of my old brownstone
in Greenwich Village
on a freezing February--
only it's November
& we are caught
with our pants down
around the ankles,
& our balls,
made of brass,
clangs against a stiff cold radiator.

But the sound is enough
to alert the blood
that soon
very soon
it will morph
into a St. Bernard
carrying a keg of brandy
around its big furry neck,
as the steel warms.

And that hiss
is enough to settle you,
locate you,
like a bag of dope in your pocket
right after you cop,
the sickness at bay,
& you lean back into it
knowing it won't take long
to be enveloped
in that cocoon of warmth,
made well,
flushing the zero
from your bones--
not as lovely
as opium vapors
perhaps,
but a drift
by any other means
is still
a drift
into the
ease. You light
a cigarette,
put on some Monk,
and wait.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

THE ALAMO

is now on 11th Street
& University Place,
in Greenwich Village.
I'm hunkered down
fending off
the onslaught.
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna
can go and fuck himself
before I surrendeer.
I've got a sure as shit
straight-shooting musket
and my friend, Jim,
a Bowie knife. And balls,
I got them.
And so does enough coon-skin hats
to shoot the gold
from the capped-teeth of every Mexican
with bad breath and worse hygiene.
I played worse odds;
I grew-up in Brooklyn,
Coney Isand; the arcade
had the faces of mom & dad
plastered like wanted signs
down an illegitimate birth canal.
I could use a shot
of red-eye and a priest
to make fun of.
Because nobody will be left
to tell the tale
and history might think
we were fearless
instead of the foul-breathed
interlopers we are.
Uncle Walt
fucked us all.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

A SORT OF PLEA

Doctor, I've lost
my connective tissue--
have you seen it?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

HALLOWEEN

My mother
dresses me
as myself;
I'm confused enough,
she tells me.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

I WON'T PAY FOR YOUR LOVE,

For P, a black cat prowling...

but I'll gladly pay for your book.
Some work
is too dear
while others are,
as they say,
"on the arm."

"Love," a miserable shape-shifter,
is maleable, wily, untrustworthy,
dangerous in its excess
& yet more so
in its absence;
it's unhinged, schized,
juiced with questions,
& arid of answers...
& always,
always, costs
much more than you ever thought.

While a book
no matter how twisty,
no matter how difficult,
is solid, its pages glued,
its letters made of concrete
spawns words which spawns sentences
which the eye can see & digest until
it makes sense
or doesn't; you're enriched
or you move on. But
in all accounts,
if the writer is serious,
you know that those words
were fought over, paid for,
in the only currancy art knows:
blood.

And so, my dear,
if I love you,
or you me--
that's our problem.
It's our Coney Island funhouse
or madhouse
or doghouse
of the mind.
But your book exists
outside that as yours,
your peculiar take
on this carnival,
as a testament
of a survival
outside the bounds
of a pedestrian matrimony;
an affirmation
in the boldest sense
of a life lived
despite the odds
of an early exit,
as revenge
for a life lived
without permission
accepting payment
like the grandest of hooker's acknowledgement
of just what a fantastic lover she is.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

BECAUSE THERE IS SO MUCH BEAUTY

that only torture brings out,
I've made sure
to have stockpiled
enough pain annuities
to last a lifetime.
My memory bank
welcomes the lash
& the leash
of new subscribers,
but should I see
a masochistic downturn
I simply tune in
to my favorite stations
and taste the blood
of a finely aged betrayal.

Johnny Keats
waxing poetic
on a Grecian Urn
shook the Brooklyn
off its perch
and into the steely crabgrass
where the hanging-judge
and the lotus-eater
hold court.

To all those
who've hurt or crippled me,
I cannot thank you enough.
To all those
who've fooled or betrayed me,
my hat is off to you;
you have lived far past
your expiration date,
but torture me still.
You've birthed this poem
and those which came before
and those which come after.
It's a signless road,
but well-traveled.
I can find it in the dark.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

EVIL IS DELICIOUS

From filching
a penny candy
when you were a kid,
to fucking
your best friends wife
yesterday morning
when you still had spirit,
the lure of being bad
surges like a jolt of adrenaline
into the fisheye of a bottom feeder.

From the furtive glance
into your classmate's answers,
to the minutely planned
afternoon bank heist,
to the first time
you copped heroin
on uptown blackened streets,
the steady drip
of transgression's nectar
prickles the heart
and pumps the testicles.

Evil has so many flavors
to slake the thirst
of a sandpaper tongue;
to satisfy the hunger
of a righteous bloated belly
pretending in their noble robes
or street urchins
lurching from a wooden cross.

These moves
& counter moves,
this crisscrossing
of God's wires,
mimicing the raven & the wolf
naturally fucking
a Grand Vision of deceit
funnels into view
all that makes life worth living:
renegades in love/a reckless art.
It turns desire
into mania;
it boils the blood
turning its watercolors of propriety
into a lustrous oil slick;
and its why I still covet
your cunt, your redolent cunt of gushing liquids,
into a glorious pool of sin,
a sin that welcomes
its sinner
& blesses
his arrival.

Norman Savage
Greensich Village, 2019

POETRY

like a worm
inching into the bird's beak
these years swallowed
& turned into an excrement
of words.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

SUNDAYS, A FAMILY DAY

were days
to lick
your week's wounds
while trying to avoid
repercusions (& concussions)
& trips to the family's farm
of home-grown kosher guilt.
It was a day littered
with traps
sprung from short-term memory
and long held grudges,
and the poisoned paranoia
of projection missles
launched into an already
scattered mind.

Sunday was a reminder
of not what you were,
but what you'd never become.

But away from the yapping
I would think of journeys
into the mouths of ideas;
each cavity, a tunnel;
each country or little town
held its own language
of pain as I dived
to meet where each exposed nerve
came from; where the roots
were rotten, where they shimmered
naked before my inexperienced eye.

Love was salted with fear;
empathy, a narcissitic fatality.
Seeking safety, I found a bed of lies,
which I was happy to cover myself in,
allowing the whispers to warm me
as I searched for an ending
that didn't feel so goddamn awful.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

THE LOVE SONG THAT IS HEROIN

is like a Billie & Lester duet...

is like sin caressing the anxious blood...

Her nipples sore
from her baby's greed.
She knew he'd grow
into his need
and take advantage
of every extended tit
and suckle until enough warmth
lined his belly...

My flesh
awaits yours;
my lips taste
your taste.
An old man
whose memories
are almost as dry as a twig
yet spill what little sap is left
into a feverish enterprise
of grief.
History's bastard,
a slow rendition
of want...

I know I'm a sucker
for pain,
and have a cavernous sweet tooth
for memory.
And what else is memory
if not a seductive trip
down a mine field
that always leads
to loss...

Now these old bones rattle
from a barren cold
and what else
beside the blast furnace
of a flower
that swells & drips its honey
into a spoon that swirls
the spillage of time
into a hot brew
that thaws & forgives the mind
while it coats & soothes
the stomach
will suffice?

Just leave me alone
& let me drift...
on a reed.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

SEX IS SUICIDE

if you happen to be male
and weigh less than a lightbulb
and a little red Kaluta
in the thrall of early September
when they rock 'n roll
on their search & destroy mission
with every Kalutaette as they can
for up to 14 hours at a time,
fucking their brains out
as they were known to say,
using sperm stored since summer's end
& depleting huge amounts of testosterone & corticosteroids
in their best imitation of Chinese rabbits
until their guts become ulcerated
& explode:
Cause of Death: Exhaustion.

But they died happy:
No after-sex phone calls,
No deciding on a name for the kids
& no need to support them or the ol' lady;
no in-laws to visit on Sunday
when traffic is the heaviest,
no listening to office betrayals
or how Nipsy or Bipsy or Tipsy
fucked up at school,
and no thought,
should things go south,
of alimony to shoulder--
just exhaustion,
that blissful after-sex sense
of oblivion, of coming
& going all
in the same stroke--something
most men
would die for.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

TWO NURSES, A TIGHT CLOSET, AND ME

positioned between them
the heat from their white purity
invading my pubescent hospital pajamas
flushing my cheeks
igniting my regions
as I Bobby Darined my way
through Mack the Knife.
1959 was the year,
diabetes the disease,
Brooklyn the place,
an all male hospital ward my home
of dreams, rock 'n roll,
& trouble
percolating like a virus gone wild
in a rapidly aging eleven year old body
finger snappin, pretending
I was both the singer
& the song.

After the fear
loosed its grip
& needles & shots & tubes
snaking from mouths & assholes & veins
to bottles hidden beneath beds
or crucified on poles
& strange & bearded men
lost their ghostliness,
my body regained its hum
and my little Panasonic its life.
She stood propped against the door,
in all her beauty, her starched white uniform
& pronged pointed hat atop her cornsilk hair
couldn't conceal a body wanting to explode
from its confinement, watching me
mouthing lyrics, snapping fingers,
and gyrating against the pillows
allowing Bobby's hipness to take me
to where I wasn't.
I couldn't have known
that everything we are
or was going to be
was held in a tune.

I caught her
watching & smiling
a smile that wasn't--
a smile meant for a lover,
a smile that wasn't cute
but coquettish; a smile
on a different highway
with a different destination.
She held her slim index finger
up in the air...soon she was back
with another nurse. Slowly
they came to my bedside
& she reached for my hand
& led me, on trembly legs
to a supply closet across the hall
where they pressed against me:
"Sing it again, baby," she coaxed me,
"just like before."
I began to stammer.
"It's OK, baby, sing it again,
just like before."
And just like that
I snapped my fingers, found the beat,
& the shark came out
to play.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

AFTER THE IDEA HITS,

but before laying it down--
before putting pen to paper,
before putting fingers to keyboard,
before putting mouth to mic,
I must stop
to procrastinate.
I could tug
on my balls,
dig in
a little;
the decision hanging
in the balance--
type it?
scribble it?
breathe
into this smartphone?
or maybe take a shit?
brew a cup of tea?
or coffee?
start a fight
with dead people?
or look for butterflies
in my fist?
maybe stringing up
a rope?...

You see
a poem
has an urgency
I want to control
because it feels so good
and comes
so infrequently
I want to punish it
for being so stingy
while making love to it
for being so goddamned sexy.

The risk, of course,
is having them die
before they fully show,
but who said
being a hedonist
was ever easy.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

COMING CLEAN ABOUT WOODSTOCK

Fifty years ago
I had everything
I wanted: Eileen
was in my basement bed,
a half ounce of coke
was an armsreach away
in my nearby drawer,
a few fat buds
of Katmandu reefer,
a smell as pungent
as wet earth,
waited to be rolled,
my '68 Porsche
was parked outside,
& my parents,
who supported my manias,
were nowhere to be found,
God bless them.
An FM underground
was carrying the concert live,
but alla that
wasn't enough
for Eileen. (I realize now
that some women
want the real
to be really real.)
"Let's get into that cool short of yours,
we could be up there in a few hours," she said.
"Fuck that. It's a fucking madhouse up there, baby," I countered,
"let's do another line, smoke some of this beautiful bud, fuck around--
hell, we'll believe we're there--without the slop."
"C'mon, Savage,
I'll give you the best head
you ever got in the mud," she laughed.
"It's too late, baby, we'd never get near the place;
the fucking interstate is backed-up,
they're closin 95 & 17, no fucking way, baby."
"C'mon, Savage,
you lived up there--you know
all those backroads & shit
--we'll make it"...
"We can make it down here--
it's clean, air-conditioned,
we got all we need & we got showers &"...
"Oh, Savage,
I'm gonna split--
if I can get there
I'm gonna get there.

And get there
she got.

But I didn't know that
until 14 years later
when I ran into her
in Miami Beach.
She was a waitress
in a Jewish outpost of pastrami
& heart attacks and was a little beaten-up
around the edges, but
still sexy as all Hell.
I tried to get her
to fuck me that night.
I knew she wanted to,
but wouldn't that night...
or ever again. Music,
back in the day,
was principled,
& apparantly,
so was she.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

DID YOU KNOW

you could die
from constipation?
It explains
why I write.
I'm determined
to get the shit out
one way or
the other.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

YOU SLIP THE NEEDLE

in the vein
like you're getting
into an old pair of slippers
only to find it collapsed
and you searching
for a new one--
what a drag!
You've worked so hard,
been through so much,
only to be betrayed
by your own damn body
and its secret
expiration date.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

THE LOVE OF LADIES

Joni trills
in the shower
while I play
in the days' news.
Coffee bounces
from sleepy beds
of conflict
& balm
as I smell her skin
being put on--
fragrant layers
like fronds
in our overheated
hothouse.

In the afternoon
while evening sleeps
so peacefully, I'll read
to Toni her words--
music in a white man's mouth
drunk on her rhythms turning
the heart's coal
into diamonds.

Tonight, there's Simone,
both Nina & deBeauvoir,
their acid tongues disrobing
my bourgeois notions
of all things man
and all matter, women.
How we might be glued
to this affair of living,
but the living need not
be less than joyful.

And then,
there is you--
a fugitive
from your body's embrace,
a renegade from your country's enclosure,
who I've loved all my life
without knowing not your name,
but your jouissance,
who I whisper to, who I pray to,
in the dark--
blue as the tangle of smoke
from a shared cigarette
as it rises in the moonlight,
as gentle as wisps,
from Miles' Spanish horn.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

HOLDING HANDS IN HIGH SCHOOL

After crossing
a canyon of fear
where small deaths
were lily pads
across the divide
& finding her fingers,
then hands, pulling me,
like liferopes of possibilities,
(and despite an erect & pulsating newness),
gave form & meaning to Curtis' Gypsy Woman.

Suddenly,
poetry made sense;
we were meant to be sung.
Old as we were being born
into a soiled & sordid world,
yet as unabashed as desire must be,
we read each other
in that mischevious look,
a smile worthy of Mona
and a leap into a trust
that defied your history
granting, finally, a childhood,
full of fancy & exploration
flushed with a kitten's curiousity
and a lion's hunger.

We bumped hips
making our way
from the stale
high school morning
into a new day
of frivolousness--
she in her jeans,
tight hot everything
and me in my coolness--
cutting those stupid classes
of dullness & dandruff,
trying to figure out
how I could be this lucky.

We had taken the chance to look
for that most elusive minute
in a corner of convenience--
whether in a four postered bed
overlooking the Atlantic,
or on a mildewed mattress
in an abandoned Coney Island tenement--
to discover each other
again and again and again
in an indifferent home
that was vacant that day
and welcomed our foolishness
and our courage
to enter.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

MY DREAMS HAVE CHANGED THEIR CLOTHES

I dream now
of living within a Xanex,
big as a cloud,
rolling above my landscape
as I float
from dusk to dawn
battling those forces
that wants to pin me
against the ropes
& bring me back to earth;
or sometimes I'm strolling
in the park, amidst a blizzsrd
of heroin dissolving
on my tongue, taking in
the wonderment of nature
& man married
in an architecture of need;
a Mt. Kilamanjaro of reefer,
buds as big as your fist,
in their rainbow splendor
sits outside my back door.
waiting for my pleasures,
my forays into the wild...
steeling myself,
like a Kamikazie pilot,
into the wind...

then,
behind Venetian Blinds
of fear, I'd have an Uzi,
semi-autos wiht scopes,
hunting rifles, pistols,
grenades, IED's, bazookas,
flame throwers, Bowie knives,
blackjacks, brass knuckles,
& I'd wait...& plan...& wait
as these Saturday night invaders,
these revelers from the sticks,
who had crossed over bridges,
gone through tunnels,
traveled from corn fields,
or desert oil wells,
their voices skunky drunken loud,
girlish puberty, whiny, rageful,
slinging curses
as if they've driven trucks,
at boys playing men
and I'd shoot the vowels out of their teeth,
gnash the consonents from their throats,
dilate then extinguish the light
from their pupils,
and granade their dumpster's maw...
I'd watch while their dumb lips
pushed out a wince
while their backbones cracked,
vertebrea crumbled, heart exploded,
hear their screams singing an aria
of disbelief leading
to a god-awful quiet...

As you can plainly see,
I've gotten better.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

THE OLD FUCKS CLUB

In those ebuillent, carefree,
serious as cancer, full of shit,
sixties, while driving
I'd see a car approaching
from the other side of the road,
and, as he drew near,
he'd flash
his highbeams at me.
And in the spirit
of comradery,
I'd flash him back.
We were part
of an unstated club
of Porsche drivers
and nothing more
need be said.

Now, I'd be walking
concentrating mostly
on what was in front
of my next step,
but also what awaited me
further on as well.
I'd see coming up
on a cane or walker,
fingers gripped
& knuckles white,
sometimes with a friend or attendent,
another old fuck,
and as we neared,
measuring each hard fought
& precious step,
we'd look up
into each other's eyes
& smile,
or nod,
or shake our head,
wondering where
it all went
& to where next
we were going?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

I'VE CRISSCROSSED

your body,
a priest
of pornography
seizing
on each
of your neuron's tits
and sucking
the pleasures
of your offering.
I've traveled a lewdness
knowing no discretion
or boundary.
Once inside,
your blue vein
of decency
I've allowed a subterfuge
of manners.
Your body's gutters
were chastened by angels;
your only accidents
were those of purity;
a river
so relentless
it reeks
from my own
stink.

How often I've memorized
your mistakes,
sifting through
your dark forest
of motives,
your illusions
of logic,
until this old bull elephant
was strung-out & stripped
of everything
except must.

And so
I must follow
it again; I must
follow the smell;
I must search out
your secrets
that light my steps
with an explorer's fever
because as you've defined my greed,
you've also defined my love:
inexhaustible.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

EVERY DAY, A HOT, STEAMY, CONEY ISLAND SUMMER

A carousel of women
encircle my brain;
some demur & lovely
in their tease
& some fierce & subversive,
all locked for a moment
in a terrible beauty
& embrace
of my choosing
what to remember
and why
to remember it.
Eyes wide
with panic--
or is it fear
--proudly prancing
their manes dancing to deities
of visions sung loudly
proclaiming my birth
and my lies.

Yes,
my memories
oiled up
& waiting
to be caught
in this arcade,
this hothouse
of simulacrums

while my mother hides
inside the ride,
clocking my action,
judging,
finger pointing,
wagging her stiletto like tongue,
cursing my infidelities now,
then, and those to come
to term
leaving her free
to pull the levers
and adjust.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

OLD AGE

is treacherous--
I could get a hernia
merely by lifting
my eyelids.

And lowering them
is no picnic either.

Norman Savage
Greewich Village, 2019

A LITTLE OF THIS, A LITTLE OF THAT

I loved the beauty,
but needed to be bled;

I heard an alienist,
face like parchment,
cured the mentally ill
with the stories
from the mouths of mutes
swimming with the deaf;

I can't say
it helped,
but I can say
it worked.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

IT STILL WORKS

I called a hooker number
last night. She was happy
to hear from me,
she said. (I would like to think
that was not part of the act.)
Lucky, for me
she was free.
It's not all that often anymore
that desire is in synch
with the gods of availability.
I had enjoyed her company
and her other gifts
from the first time we met
and was willing to wait
for the stars to align.

I asked her over
and after some easy chitchat
we got down
to business.
I was easy; an old man
makes few requests
and even less demands.
But I was a hard nut to crack;
age and medical issues
with my hardheadedness
to heed the warnings of doctors & priests
made endings more difficult to get to--
but that was what she signed up for.
We worked & worked--
she doing most of the working;
as we teased & explored
with a practiced easiness
that, viewed from a distance,
could be mistaken for love.

Afterward,
we exchanged pleasantries
& promised to get together
sometime soon.
Her lovely perfume
trailed behind her
as the door closed.
I was satisfied
& pleased
that my dick,
looking much like a wrinkled spigot now,
still worked...and yet sad
that it wasn't the thrill
of a time gone by
when I was body & soul in love
with a girl from above
the north border
and tumbled & tumbled
into each other
and never gave a shit
whether it worked
or not.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

HERE'S YOUR HEART, HERE'S YOUR HEAD--WHICH IS WHICH, & WHERE & WHEN?

For Dr.'s C.J. & T.N.


Today,
I had a busy calendar;
there are holes
and blockages
in both my head & heart.
Each resists
too much information
or love. They are hard
to get through to.
My shrink
and my heart doc
are confused
as to which organ
is worse
and fight
over territory
hard won
or lost.
Me? I take
the easy way out:
I just pay
and pay
and pay.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

SELFISH

I'm want to be selfish tonight,
she informed me,
before I had a chance
to light a joint.
Selfish, huh,
I replied,
fumbling with a bag of reefer
& rolling papers.
Selfish,
what does that mean?
It means stop rolling that shit
& pay attention; it means
I want to be violated
& abused & punctured
& ripped up! It means
I want to be taken
& spent; it means
I want to forget
why I'm here.

She was true to her word.
When we finished
I blew away
like a feckless leaf
in a sultry wind.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

GOD SPEAKS

through Charlie,
a sniggering fat
humpbacked bell ringer
ringing in death
reborn in April's breath
breathing life into flowers,
a mauling of Johnny's beauty,
in a tangle of slippery truths,
whose roots are thorns
pricking fingers of shame.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN DEVOURED

fearing your life
could end here/now
& not caring,
so caught are you
in the moment,
in the white hot cauldron
of madness,
that for once--
& maybe forever--
you & your cannibal lover
are blessedly
speechless?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

I'VE BEEN ON A TRANE RUN

For sensual junkies of all stripes...

for about a week now.
Things like this seem to happen to me--
have a taste of Haagan Dazs tonight
& a week later my mug is still buried
in a gallon; read a Bukowski poem
& a month later you can find me
nailed & waving to him
from the next cross.
From birth
I've been a heat-seeking guided missle
of pleasure; tickle a part of my brain
& I climb aboard
without thinking
of schedule or
destination. Let the driver
or conductor worry
about that. Besides,
I reason, they're getting paid
to get me where I'm going; I'm
just along for the ride.

Sure,
sometimes the trip
has been bumpy--
unscheduled stops
for hospitals
& rehabs, a love affair
or two that had me
missing my stop or
missing an organ,
but how are you going to tell a cannibal
that the flesh he's hungered for
might be necrotic?
He'll just laugh
& eat around the edges.

Sixty-one years ago
some tasty black spoonfuls
conjured a be-bop magic
in the alchemy of a white chef's
basement in Hackensack, New Jersey.
Today, April 12, 2019,
I'm feasting
on their labors
of love.
The Trane
endures & tastes
wonderful.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

For all junkies of the senses...

SHE HAUNTS MY HEART

and patrols my borders;
she stands guard
in corridors & chambers
where Cherry Blossoms
& bloodied moons
are whipped by frenzy
into an ignorance
of desire.

Enslaved
only to her own
paranoia, the poison laced
with a mother's love,
she sets tripwires
for the naive
& firing squads
for the masters of war.

Today
is like a truce
between troglodytes
birthed from a traumatic narcissism:
one who is very comfortable being home;
and the other
unable to move--both
very much in love.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

JUST ASKIN'

What runs through her mind
as she decides
to fuck me?

Does she wait
for her molecules to heat
or is it more of a calculation
of need?

How does her body
shout at her; what demands
does it make?

How does it oil itself?

How does her thighs widen
in welcome; her lips moisten?

Or does terror seize the moment?
Contracting vice-like
her senses that allow
no pleasure, no acknowledgement
of nature's reward
for civilization's fascism?

Does she know
and does it matter
if it's me
inside her
& what part
of me is
inside her?

And does she expect
a bloody rose
or crucifixtion
afterwards?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

THIS THEY KNOW:

For Jason D.

there's always
always always
a game on.
It's a "lock."
They sit back
and gorge
and kill
with impunity:
The NRA strafes you,
insurance companies
bet on suicides;
Big Pharma loads you up
with what kills you
& cures you
& blackouts you;
hospitals divide you
in sections until your heart
can't recognize your balls;
they mangle deer & refuse
to adopt doe';
they encourage the anguished,
the impoverished, the fenced-in,
locked-in locked-up locked down
to believe in miracles
like they're winning tonight,
beating the spread,
going against all odds
because The Knicks are getting 5 tonight
and playing in The Garden against lowly Sacremento
and the Sixers are plus one against Boston at home,
and Sugar Ray is fighting Sugar Free while Sugar's pussy is open to the winner;
and, hey, first pitch is tomorrow and ya never know...

Tonight you have a dinner, a six pack,
and a game--that you know. You know
your bosses prick is back in his pants
and you're back in your crib...safe
at home. The rest of the world
can go and fuck itself--as it
usually does. But first
a message from our sponsor.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

COMES LOVE

I love
the helplessness
of it.
Two petri dishes
of madness
under the imperfect eye
of God, strains
to impregnate Spring
in her supersaturated frenzy.
How marvelous to lose control
of reason and lie
under covers cool
with the loveliness of minutes
on a spinning axis of desire.
Relax,
nothing more to do
than what is being
done.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

SOMEBODY'S GONNA DIE

first in this race
pitting me against
my brother.
I saw him yesterday
& it seems like
he's winning; he got fat,
sluggish, lumbering,
winded, stuggling
for air on his flight
up a starecase to see me.
For so many reasons
I can't let that happen:
who would I talk to,
laugh with,
get angry at,
believe I'm better than?
And
I never did him any favors
turning him onto dope
when I was young
& he was younger.

Seventeen years ago
I got clean
while he kept at it,
wanting to do more research
on addiction
& dependence
& being dead
while breathing.
And now
I merely have
diabetes,
congestive heart failure,
& COPD
emphysema
which puts me
at a disadvantage.
We had learned
that in our family
sickness was lauded;
the prize
was attention;
you did less
with more;
the dream was extended,
the womb elongated,
the warm float
endless.
Taking care of ourselves
only led
to taking care of others
and who really wants
to do that.

We narrowed our worlds
to only two,
racing each other
to the grave.

Stay tuned.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

FINALLY, A HIP KITTY

Wears all black--
skulls & bones stuff;
knows animal rights
& human rights depends
on which jungle you live in.
The only scars she shows
are the words she writes
which are all too often
written in invisible ink.

She curls
into love
like a clenched fist,
releasing trust
like a vagabond hitchhikes--
not because she has to
but because
she must.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

I FEEL JUST GOOD ENOUGH

For my girl Puma Perl

to feel guilty.
Don't ask me why
that is--
it just is.
And so
I don't want to do anything
until this perplexing mood
goes away,
sucked-up
by my natural stream
of venom
& recriminations;
until the vileness
of pleasantries
are denied
an easy passport
into the bloodstream
of pernicious doubt--
where all good poems live;
until I feel
normal again.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

I WOULD MAKE FUN

of all things
I understood
little about--
take math
for example:
how 2 & 2
rarely made 4;
or take, for example
progressions; or take
for example
falling objects
at a certain speed;
or take love
for example,
and how it makes a mockery
of rationality.

It's you,
of course,
sitting
in a dim florescent corner,
far away
from the dogs
of Hell
barking
on a wet Surf Avenue street
in Brooklyn
on a cold Coney Island's evening
the only steam rising
from the fish counter
at Nathan's
waiting
for me
to ask you
to dance--
& me
never one to see
straight lines
or negotiate
distances,
stumbled
over a raised
threshold
of chance.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

THERE IS NO GREATER THRILL

for a drug addict
than finding a drug
that you thought
had skipped out
on you.
Today,
it was a baby aspirin,
81 miligrams
in a tiny yellow Beyer dot
that helps thin my blood
in my heart holy clogged universe.
It was hiding
behind my coffee pot
and the thick black cord
connecting it
into the socket
behind that.
I had thought
I'd looked there yesterday
but musta missed it after
looking on the floor,
gas range and crack
between the icebox
& cleaning cabinet.
Shit, I'd said then,
and shook out
another pill.

It's not that I think
about medications
of all kinds
but obsess about them too.
If I wasn't taking drugs,
if I wasn't sick
who would I be?

Drugs have been my savior.
Drugs have been my confidant,
my muse, my benefactress and
my regulator; they've been the elixer
for this coward's blood:
They've gotten me up
in the morning & coaxed me into bed
at night giving me purpose
& dreams in this hellish game
of Truth or Consequences.

Soon, if I do everything right
or nothing at all, a door will open
on its own.
I've stashed Dramamine
every place I could think of
just in case.
Call me crazy
or call me Ishmael, I don't care.
But prepared
I will be.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

STICKY-NOTES

for your brain
comes preinstalled
from the manufacture
at no extra cost
to you; some work
and some do not--
as to why
we don't know.
They're boxed
& layered
with general divisions
& sub-divisions
like: Family,
Lovers, Sex, Food,
Pleasures, Pain,
Betrayals and
Not Yet Named and some
are left blank
with possibility.

Today, it was cancer
& The Babe & his daughter's death
at the age of 102.
I never had cancer,
never knew The Babe
and didn't know his daughter,
but I did have diabetes
and thought a lot about,
and gravitated toward,
dying & death at 11
seemingly going forward.
The Times had Julia's demise
noted & all I had to do
was click on it & there I was
at 12 remembering
The Babe not able to eat
the white of a hard-boiled egg
without blood
gushing from his gums
& pain indenting his body
into a jolting question mark.
My note had many
traumatic question marks:
how was I going to die?
how messy would it be?
who would be there
to hold my hand
and get me
from this place
to the next?
I was able to see
the starched white nurses'
starched white uniforms,
smell the disinfectant,
taste the bile
of fear, and fear
each minute yet to come.

I read his bio
61 years ago,
but it stuck
somewhere
in the stack
under Health
maybe Dying
maybe both.

Breathing
after the first breath
is dangerous.
It should come
with instructions
or warnings--
but then again,
no. they shouldn't--
it's a crap shoot--
let's leave it
at that.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

TICKLE THOSE 88's

Happy Birthday, Toni.
And thank you.
Thank you
for locating
my heart,
corroded as it was
(& is),
& pumped it back to life
at moments that I thought
it was failing.
You've done it
& are doing it
for fifty years.

Have as grand a time
as I am having
cracking open
your newest work.
Much love, baby,
N.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

NO, I DON'T FORGET MUCH

& I don't forgive much,
& so,
I don't have much--
except much to say
which really
isn't much
to speak of.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

ACT YOUR AGE!!!

And therein lies
my confusion:
I am
all ages
at all times;
I blow bubbles
as I blow by
reason; I cheat
on common sense tests;
I've found a home
on the cusp
in extremis;
I've indulged
a radical obediance.
I've flown high
on an electrical trapeez
naked, wondering
where the hell the bar is...

Under my pillow
I have a warehouse
of fantasies;
my sock drawer
is filled only
with holes
& secrets; I keep
your breath
inside my own
to shape the glassblower's art.

I need not get
any older
than I was
when a kid;
when madness
was vivid
& possibility
endless, when nothing
made sense
& feeling
& only feeling
suggested
an old & abiding
intelligence.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

YOU SEND ME

was Sam's crossover hit;
Monk was about to play
The Five Spot
for a month at a time.
The year was 1957
and I was about to crawl into a closet
with a ten year old girl.
I was friendly with her cousin
who lived around the corner from me
in Brooklyn. Ever play strip poker?
she asked. I can play Go Fish & War,
I countered. Ever see a girl's thing?
she asked. Just my mother's,
I countered. That doesn't count,
she said, you wanna see one?
I do. Yes I do.
OK, but you have to show me yours.
Alright...when?
Right now, stupid.
We were in her parent's living room
and the sun was pouring over us
lighting the sins we were surely
committing. But sin is delicious
anytime, anywhere, any age,
no matter if you know
what the hell you're doing
or not.
I slipped off my polo shirt
& squirmed out of my dungarees.
Now you, I said, holding fast
to my underwear.
She unbuttoned her white blouse
& took it off; nothing much
there. Stood up & wriggled
out of her blue & black checked skirt;
her Catholic school uniform
& placed herself before me.
Let's go into the closet, she said.
I didn't know precisely why
she said that, but I didn't argue
with experience.
She left the door open
and removed her panties.
I stared at it; it was
so smooth,
so contained,
I could have looked forever.
Now you, she said. Dazed,
I slipped them off
feeling the heat rise
in my neck & face.
What thrills I had
looking & touching & licking
trouble.

Somewhere Sam is sweetly
making love to a microphone;
& Monk, that lover
of the inexpressable note,
has heard what he alone
is able to hear & is dancing
around his keys.
In due time
I will find them both
and they will be part
of the whole, the whole
crazy thing
we call
memory.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

MISE EN SCENE, BEDROOM, GREENWICH VILLAGE, 2019

Naked,
on the edge
of my bed, surfing
back & forth
between The Warriors
& Law & Order--
Curry hits a 30 footer,
McCoy offers man one,
25 to life,
Warriors up by 5,
McCoy says, "take it or leave it,"
it's 9 degrees outside,
my nipples dance to the air
that startles them from afar;
eyes sift a tabletop full of medicines:
syringes, needles, insulin, inhalers,
and Lucky Strike
next to a Coke can ashtray;
one woman after the next
elbow each other aside,
languishing, dancing, whispering
the once in a lifetime kiss
they offer and take
away as Perry Mason ends
& The Twilight Zone begins (
the realization
that my parents are dead
effects me less
than the beautiful girl
nurturning flowers
by her graveside
) and I think:
how much gray
can one man take
before he goes mad;
how much uncertainty
before each word,
each poem, laughs
at you? Not much longer,
not much more,
I think, but that
is the problem
with thinking.
Hitchcock fits
into his silhoutte
as his & my
next half hour
begins.
I hope it's
s good one.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

I SOUND LIKE AHAB

walking the deck
of The Pequod.
I thump
up & down
the empty stairs
of my brownstone
with my cane
sounding my own
particular madness
raging at God's
insensitive deafness
& my brown & drying
departed youth;
a body
in the midst
of rebellion
& decay.

I will give any man
this enigmatic gold doubloon if,
with this harpoon,
forged by a devil's fire,
to find for me
a memory
that doesn't speak
in simple sentences,
but rhapsodizes in soliloquies
righteous of prosaic complications--
going one step
to the next,
going out
& coming home
& warming myself
by the word furnace
of make believe
so elementary
& so endless.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

THE THIN SKIN OF A CONNOISSEUR

The first thing I did,
besides looking for exit signs,
when interviewing a potential lover
in her pad
was note her books--if any
--and/or riff through her albums
& rate them.
Depending on my find,
I'd consider how long
this affaire de coeur,
flirtation,
dalliance, or
just plain old
hanky-panky
would last.
The find--if any--
would provide me
points of entry;
it helped compute
her shelf life.
I can't say
I was picky.
Any poetry books
beside Rod McKuen,
would keep me reading;
any stylist,
beside Kate Smith,
had me listening.
Eager I was
to plumb the depths
of her disease,
while constructing a nexus
of meeting points
& be-bop hymns.
I needed to know
if she was a Hallmark card
or someone who demanded
no distraction
or an LP of endless consideration.
I thought I knew
my way around this life
and what was worth
my time and
what wasn't.
Don't you?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

REMINISCENCE & REALIZATION

A finger,
the pinky,
has been lost
in the cooker
once you've tasted
dope.
You'll always
remember
what it looked like,
but you'll never,
never ever never ever
be able
to get it
back.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

INSIDE A WARM GRAY COCOON

listening to Trane
& Monk's Ruby,
My Dear
on a rainy New York
afternoon bending
into evening
allowing myself
to be soothed
by a love
that straddles time
& its infirmities.

Within the moist breath
of a whisper
I feel the hand
of my green-eyed lover
nestle into the small of my back
amid the smells of candy apples
& cotton candy on a steamy
Coney Island night.
Every once in awhile
she leans in
& kisses my neck.
A delicious shiver
wriggles inside me.
Mmm, I go.
I dare to cup her breast.
She does not
deny me.
We are coming from,
& on our way to
salvation.

We've come through
the briars
of adolescence,
but hold a rose
in each of our hands,
a red rose soft
but indestructible.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

I AM OF TWO MINDS...

often times more.
My laser sharp focus
& perception
gives way
to the jangly route
of interpretations
& judgements.
My translators
are certain
of their acumen;
each are convinced
of their skills
in decoding
history's symbols
& signposts.
My mushy brain
becomes a Wellsian mirrored
ping-pong table
played by masters
of irrefutable logic
& evidence.

Senses impress,
the rest impresses
upon me.
She loves me...
but why
does she love me?
You can see
how flummoxed
I can get
at such obviousness.

I'm in the market
for a tourniquet
for executive functions
of all kinds.
I've heard that Amazon
will deliver it
to my door.
But how to pay for it
is still an open question.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

TRANSVESTITES & BUTCHERS

For Hannah Sullivan

I am a lover
of words; I seek
fantasies through
metaphors, beauty
through suggestion.
It is a time
when gravediggers
wait for the earth
to dismiss its frost;
a time when ladies wait
in ladies garments
for New Jersey truckers
to grab a handful of cock
before their I95 mirror
of masculinity.
They carry their hairy husk
of doubt
and dribble from a slack mouth
of evening's fast lanes.

I'm in Florent
sitting next to a high yellow princess.
We listen to the nightime swish
of meatpacking blood
slicking cobblestones maroonish,
thick with animal stink.
I've been to The Vanguard
and heard Cecil solo.
She listened to a different music.
We're both hungry.
We will both go home
but not together.

A limp wind kisses
against boredom.
A bluetit crab
curbed by rumors
of the sea
burrows deeply
into my lover's dreams.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

INSIDE THESE FENCES

Good fences,
a flinty New Englander
once wrote,
makes good neighbors.
And I've constructed
millions of them.
I've tried to keep out
the many bad
and dangerous sides
of my mind
that assault
from places known
and hidden;
that spreads its poisons
secretly
or trumpets its disdain;
the side that believes
that love is finite,
that kindness
is for faggots
or mothers,
that bleeding
reveals flags,
that color is destiny,
that poems are limp-wristed,
and that my heart is really really
pure
and beyond reproach.
But somehow the pebbles
or stones
or boulders
get moved
and all my time is spent
shoring up
a more porous
container.
It's taken me
almost a lifetime
to learn
a most basic truth:
we can never know
the other
unless
we allow them
to sit at our table
and discuss mysteries
both big
& small,
until the stones
are rubbed
smooth
of its
edges.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019