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

ONCE AGAIN I AM AFRAID THAT I AM DOING THIS ONCE AGAIN AND I AM AFRAID I AM DOING THIS

thinking
I am in a new place
afraid
among old rivals
lost, but once here
in the comfort & confusion
only repetition can bring
bouncing against walls
which hold me
fast or threaten
to throw me out
& in spite
of a brain
too feverish
in its ice grip,
too estranged
by all
that's familiar
I am lulled
into the belief
I've always been here
as it conforms
to my fears
of knowing everything
about nothing
as I place
my dusty satchel
full of stale air
I am overcome with sleep
but I can't sleep
so pace,
& lie down,
& pace,
& lie down,
& pace,
trying to find sleep,
the sleep I've slept
forever.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

YES MOMMY, OF COURSE, DADDY

always followed
by the silent
Fuck You
writ large
or small
once the lights
dimmed, the doors
closed, the mice
scurry and shadows
leave behind fears
like droppings
and your demons
romp.
Get out
the knife,
cut along
the perforation;
invert
the spike,
jiggle the vein,
ride the white horse,
purge the loving dinner,
slip your panties
off those frozen ankles.

How good
being bad
feels.

The gasoline
smells so good
each time
I fill the tank.
Almost as good
as the mimeograph
machine smelled
as I printed copies
of "Ode On A Grecian Urn"
for Miss Edelman's class
on a hot and pregnant day
sixty years ago
tomorrow imagining
my fingers fingering
her breast, my mouth
in her ear,
the ink still wet,
the pages moist,
I wept from excitement.

I sat next to
an old colored woman
on the crosstown bus.
She'd sowed a mean leopard print
onto her denim shirt
and had a leopard hat on her Sunday morning perm,
red nails, buffed, and red lipstick sitting proud
on her lips, I inhaled her
renegade blues walking up and down the aisle.
A hard-headed lover, and head turner,
stubborn, opinionated,
twisted with abandon,
we knew what stop
to get off
and off
we got.

Mommy,
I said.
Yes, Daddy,
whatchowantsugar?
Your sweet self,
I replied,
Come and get it.
The demons stood back
and let me go get near.

It was only Wednesday;
and I'm off tomorrow.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016