I KNOW IT'S LOVE

More than whispers
through the circuits;
more than melancholia
or madness or horror
or pining or pinging
or longing or traveling
those dark highways
between dreams.
It no longer matters
to me
if love,
mine
or
yours
or
anyone
else's,
is crippled
or mangled
or mixed up
and fused
or inter
fused
with roses
blue
or
black
or red.
Certainly
it's not
my poetry
that causes
you to return
over & over
& over
despite
what you might call:
reason.
It can't be me
either, or the love
of self.
You've proved that
over & over & over
again. And...
I don't care
what it is.
Some crazy switch
was turned. I'm a
mirror for your own
life; a neuron
that tells you
how to act, how to move,
how to proceed.

Freud doesn't work
for me anymore, nor
does Sartre or Picasso,
Keats or Bukowski.
We're all driven
by love or lack.
If we're lucky
we still have illusion
and a certain faith
in getting it all wrong
over & over & over
again.

If you're home
you're watching
60 Minutes.
I don't blame you;
I could use some
new information
to misinterpret
or amuse. The bus
& trains will run
tomorrow & there's a hint
of autumn tonight.
I made some chicken,
rice & black beans with
hot sauce for dinner.
I've saved
a Milky Way for desert.
And I hope
you're smiling.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

CAFE REGGIO

has welcomed
the souls of the lost
and found
for a hundred years.
On MacDougal
in the West Village
it looks the same
as when I chanced upon
it in the early sixties:
Italian European, small,
serving coffee, black
or brown & little pastries,
to radicals, tourists,
reds, writers, philosophers,
ex-anything, poor, rich,
confused, without question,
intrusion or concern.
You can still sneak
a smoke
every once in awhile
and they will pretend
they haven't noticed.

On this Sunday,
full of laziness,
I walked through Washington Square
and over; thankfully
it was not too busy.
I ordered espresso
& a piece of Italian cheesecake,
and took out
my Celine--
and thought of Roi
reading his Heidegger
sixty years ago.
I've got plenty
of pretensions
to last a lifetime
but that
is not
one of them.

Pretty single ladies
sat at tables,
turning the pages
of paper books;
sugar cubes
on the tables.
There was a time
I'd get invited
into their one room flats
& later into their well appointed
bodies. This time,
however, the snack
worked better
with my life
than they would; I still have time
to find their soft spots
if it ever comes
to that.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014