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

THE WATER BUG'S DRESS REHEARSAL

scuttered across
linoleum outside
my door
as I left for work
this morning.
It was an ugly fuck:
big & fat & black & brown
with whisper feelers
going this way & that
finding its way
into a kitchen
cabinet, water drain,
bathroom piss stained
shit stained soul stained
corner.
Goddamned motherfucker
as my sneaker clad
two hundred and sixty pound
frame found his beetle
back and stomped the shit outta him;
his liquids flew,
underneath his broken body,
flying to his sides puss green,
purple matted latched upon
the nearest wall's borders.
Bam: back broken, spleen exploded,
lungs busted-out, brain mashed,
eyes popped, ears filled with slime,
arms and legs shattered, asshole
popped. He was gone before
he knew
his name.

I lifted my leg--
just the way
I'd like to go
someday, as I went
to the trains
instead full
of mercy.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017