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