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

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

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

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

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

FUCK WALTER MISCHEL

and his marshmellow test.
Who in their right mind
would wait a year to eat
two marshmellows when
you can eat one now?
And that's supposed to tell me
who will cure cancer
and who will die of cancer?
Gimme the marshmellow
now. I've been
a heat seeking
guided pleasure missle
before I knew what pleasure was:
put a bag of dope,
a scotch neat,
a jelly bean or two or three, or a hundred thousand,
or Milky Way,
a piece of ass, a pair of tits,
three of a kind, or Royal Flush,
even a parting of lips
in front of me,
and I'm a gonner.
How about a warm apple pie
cradling a Hagan-Daz scoop of vanilla--
I'd crawl over my mother
to get next to that.
Wait a year!? Are you outta yer mind!?
I want to get the fuck outta me now,
motherfucker. What is pleasure about?
I want to lose myself; I want to get lost:
Lost in wine, in women, in poetry, in song.
That is how you find things
out. You lose control, you go crazy...
for a second, a week, a month, years.
Unfortunately,
most don't.
What horrible lives
they must lead.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

I GREW-UP BRONX

and brown
and stingy
like paper cuts.
My zip code
was a garbage can.
Felix fucked me
against the steel
subway car
in a slum yard he was signing in
that night and I was somewhere
between a thumb
& forefinger and
I don't know nothin
about cumming but he did
cause my fingers dripped
with him & I never did
go home
cept to bury my own self
as winter sat
on my knee
and all the graves
whistled at me
in the dark.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

NO, STAY THERE

she said
with her hand,
light, yet full
of urgency.
My mouth
wrote
curlicues
inside
her privacy.
I signed
my name
with my breath.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

A THANKSGIVING FOR MONGRELS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGb5IweiYG8

A genius in the blood
both vile and rabid,
bit the country's
flesh and inflicted
a pure poison that runs
through arteries and veins
pulsating coast to coast.

The car is driven
by hunger. Beauty
is in marriage,
alchemy is fertile
& febrile &
forbidding.

It's Peggy Lee
aching. While
Captain Smith
& Pocahontas nutty
as kittens,
discover other,
more sacred lands
to explore.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

TASTES & TEXTURES

Courvoisier & coffee, black,
she said to the waiter.
I'll have the same,
I said without looking at him.
She was older than me
& more schooled
in all the ways
of the night.

We were waiting,
as all new lovers do,
for our molecules
of passion to run
head long into
each other.

The Vanguard
was low lit,
& lazy,
allowing people
to pray
to a god
of their own
choosing; I choose
touch
& placed my hand
inside her skirt's fold:
Nylon shivered
against my fingers.

She poured her cognac
into her coffee & took
my cigarette from me.
Smoke swirled into the lights.

Sonny stood before us, alone,
his huge gold tenor hanging
from his neck.
"Where or When" braced
the room
and I,
& everyone else,
stopped
breathing.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

OBSESSIONS

are our jailor's key:
they lock you up,
they lock you down,
and they let you out
just long enough
to crave the relief
they offer: a dance
on the head of a pin
called death.
They simplify
complications.
They ease
bordom.
They give rise
to fantasies
only fantasy
can provide.

Work, gambling,
eating, sex,
drinking, drugging,
masturbating
ourselves
endlessly
& forever
is surely
preferable
to the dull
monotonous
routine
that dog's
our days.
To be caught
is to be
liberated.
Where are they?
Who are they with?
When will I be with them?
How will I be with them?
When will they call?
Should I answer?
Will I answer?
Should I call?
How will they come back?
Will they come back?
When will they come back?
Are they fucking?
How are they fucking?
What position are they in?
How big is the cock?
the breast? the wallet?
Do they think of me?
When do they think of me?
How much to bet?
The next meal?
Draw to a straight?
Twenty minutes to three, twenty five minutes to a drink, the taste, the smell, the first sip, the going down, the settling of nerves, the feeling right, normal, OK, seventeen minutes to three...or five, or midnight, or three a.m?

Writers write and painters paint
to make vibrant the dullness of time.
The great Karl Wallanda said:
"Walking the wire is living,
the rest is waiting."

And now,
my waiting,
begins.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

ANOTHER KIND OF SEX POEM

PENETRATION IS 9/10 OF THE LAW

Con Edison dug deep
past what was rock
next to Jack
whose rhythm
was broken
just as he was ready,
and she primed; he'd been trying
to fuck her for years now.
Jack was hot for her.
Very hot.
He had exhausted all the old lines:
C'mon once before we live;
you ain't gettin any older;
who ya savin it for; I wouldn't tell,
I promise, I wouldn't... shit,
there's no one here to tell--
but Thelma wouldn't budge.
Finally, in desperation:
Hey, honey, I ain't goin nowhere, this is forever--
did it.
She hiked
those angelic crinolins
up where God winked.
Jack strained and sweated
forgetting which came off first
as the first light
shone through worm holes,
but Jack didn't care; his nostrils were caves.
Hell, I'm so close; I'll deal with that shit later.
But Thelma had swiftly put the vise on.
Jack sued: invasion
of privacy; noise harrassment;
any goddamn thing.
But the judge
looking more like a blacksmith
asked: Well,
did ya cop? Did ya get
the little fella in?--
Jack, a bit embarrassed,
answered, no--
--threw his ass out.

Jack climbed back down
into the huge Con Ed hole thinking
of how to bullshit another 100 years
living next to a woman
who no longer
trusted him.

Norman Savage
Coney Island, 1969

Fore-Play, Here-Say or Wish-Full Thinking

Longer and dryer
then a sealed empty jar
I wait
without sex
wishing perhaps
to die
with an erection
and without
a coming god.
He will never come
while I'm alive;
anything else
is fore-play,
here-say
or wish-full
thinking.

I came,
finally,
spilling
between her legs
wet and gleaming;
cursing
the daylight
and spent
the rest of my life
returning
like fucking is--
getting back in,
while getting back
at her.

Norman Savage
Coney Island, 1967