HEY GOD, WHY DO YOU STILL ITCH IN THOSE PLACES HARD FOR ME TO SCRATCH? AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT, LET'S GET SOMETHING TO EAT

I'm an old fuck. Simple.
Supposed to be wise? Nah.
Supposed to be cool? Nah.
All things that ancients
are said to be, I'm not.
Now, I'm just a nervous wreck,
have to do more
with less.

You'd think
having gone
through a hundred Thanksgivings
with a hundred poisoned arrows
sticking from the breasts of turkeys,
and a hundred Christmas'
using my balls for sleigh bells,
I'd stop asking, "why?"
But you'd be wrong.

Another one of life's suckers
sitting on the edge of my bed
balancing a tit in one hand,
and a ringer in the other.
I hide in the darkness
between dreams watching the frost
weeping on the gravediggers muddy boots.

My weatherman is Lear.
Unlike Rasknolikove,
I've done nothing wrong,
yet want to be punished.
I'm one of few remaining
hip white men: Mulligan
playing with Monk; singing harmony
with Jerry Lawson & The Persuasions;
thinking if I could sing like Roi
onto the white page I could escape
a bleached & bland topography.

And so, here I am,
sitting on the edge of the world
as we threaten to once again
blow it up, but that doesn't
bother me; that has never bothered me;
a recalcitrant fool
is my calling card,
no matter the age.
No,
it's all the people I've loved
who parade by & drift away
when I want to grab & hold.

But I'm an old fuck
with arthritic fingers
juiced with memories
and confusion.

Listen, hon,
I'll have the fries with that
and don't forget the hot sauce, please,
and if you can double bag it
I'd appreciate it--I've got a long way
to go. And
here's a little bit extra,
for you. Thanks...(Usually,
that works.)

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

ACT YOUR AGE!!!

And therein lies
my confusion:
I am
all ages
at all times;
I blow bubbles
as I blow by
reason; I cheat
on common sense tests;
I've found a home
on the cusp
in extremis;
I've indulged
a radical obediance.
I've flown high
on an electrical trapeez
naked, wondering
where the hell the bar is...

Under my pillow
I have a warehouse
of fantasies;
my sock drawer
is filled only
with holes
& secrets; I keep
your breath
inside my own
to shape the glassblower's art.

I need not get
any older
than I was
when a kid;
when madness
was vivid
& possibility
endless, when nothing
made sense
& feeling
& only feeling
suggested
an old & abiding
intelligence.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

WHAT DO I DO

now that I'm too old
for love
but not love songs?
What if my tears
are for me
& a world
grown paunchy
& infirm?

I'm not gracious,
I know.
In fact,
more ravenous
as my stomach shrinks
from a diet of memories.

How do you feel
the first kiss
or the last
good one?
How do you breathe
that young breath
of candy-store bought powder
or an educated perfume?
How does your body shiver
when fingers,
other than yours,
unzips you?

It's time to declare
a "Do Over," a "Hindu;"
the ball hit a crack
or was taken by a strange wind
& spun
in a direction
unintended.
I want another shot
at these ancient mysteries.

And who knows?
I might even find you?
Again.
Perched on a ledge
ready to dive
& kindle
a wild river
or have nothing
on your hands
except time.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

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

WHEN MY EX-WIFE WAS BORN

I was already in love
with another woman.
In fact,
I was crazy in love with her.
It moved pieces of me around.
But then,
junk took over,
and made the living
dead & the dead more real
than the living,
but the dead didn't dance
for decades--
until my ex
became my now
& now became new
& shiny.
But then,
the junk took over.
And darkness fell
on a soft
& useless
dick.
These women,
loves of my life,
were born three days
but twenty-six years
apart.
One was straight-laced New Jersey finishing school;
the other radical Japanese artist Nagasaki poor.
The common denominator
was me...
& poetry.
Always is.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

IT WOULD BE SILLY

One For the Old Geezers

to try
& lie
to you
now.
You know
I'll try.
I know
I'll try.
I promise
to resist.

Some
have noticed
a diminishment
of poems
of late.
Some
have even
inquired.
No,
I tell them,
it's the gods
that destroy
& make men mad,
not I. I am ready
I assure them
and am merely
waiting like any
good Christian
to receive
what is given.
I tell them,
take heart,
I still want to fuck
every woman I see,
& more importantly,
they want to still fuck me.
(I'm sure they know,
as I do,
that's only half true).
Yes, I still imagine
nipples naked with need
of varying length
& sweetness & color;
yes, I still taste
different heated nectars of emissions.

And the words still come
but slower; better,
perhaps, but slower.
And memories perfect
in their lies, pile up
on runways waiting
for this infernal fog to lift
but stubbornly clings
to the sides of wings preventing
full flight:
fully in control of exceleration,
the Porsche obeying my instincts,
leaning into a corner at fifty,
a magician's inner stroke
of light's genius;
the proper word to light
the inner demons of a cueball
& bank life's mystery & madness--
a sweet narcissism
of self-serving
excellence.

There will be
more poems,
good & bad
after this;
how many
is not for me
to say.
I'm sure
"slowing down"
is an "art"
too, but one
I haven't
mastered
yet.
I've been too busy
trying to work
on it.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

OVERNIGHT

the rivers freeze
& the sand deepens.
Once, you were able
to do things
like tie shoelaces
without thinking
& now
you would prefer
not to think,
but have to.
There's nothing
to be done
but adjust
constantly.
I could offer advice
but like myself
you wouldn't take it.
This is the wind
from vacant lots,
the straw in the hair
of heros.
These are words
like tombstones
in the mouths
of mumblers.
Everything
is a beginning
of something.
Everything
is an end
to something
that came before.
There is little to be done
with the dead skin
except remember
how vicious
& vibrant
we once
were.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

ARE YOU A WHORE?

I ask a little girl
who passes me
in the hot summer air.
She displays
a peacock's plummage
on top of her head:
streaks of green/blue/magenta/red
hair, black leather studded garb,
black fishnets ripped & torn up
up to her cunt & cheeks of her ass,
nose rings/ear rings/lip rings
snarl from her face.
Her mouth curls
as if I'd said something wrong
or beyond the pale:
Go Fuck Yerself,
she says.
A most reasonable request,
I think,
for a much
younger
man.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

WITHOUT THINKING

a hand finds
the back of my neck
and casually rests
soothing the wrinkles
inside my head
with her fingers
brushing
the tops of drums.
How lovely
is that in
the early evening
as the madness of the day
airs itself out
and a gentleness
eases itself in--
like listening to Al Green
Backing Up the Train.
You pray a little
you will never speak again
or hear any language that can't
be sung.
You know,
of course,
you've done nothing
to deserve this kindness
except live
through another day
of hell.
"Baby,
that feels so good,"
you want to say,
but don't.
Instead you note
the passage of time:
why it feels this miraculous
at seventy
as it did
at seventeen;
and there I am
still bewildered
at how women know
where to touch you
and when.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

I'VE BEEN LOVED

by women past
& present
many years older
or younger who
I love
when not too much
in love
with myself.
In each affair
I've given
everything
I couldn't
hold back.
Women who've been
to finishing schools
& rouged their nipples
& dressed before bed
in French silk taffeta,
and those who've spent
endless nights on open grates
on east village sidewalks
and brought weapons
wrapped with sex
& mindfulness
into our cradle.
They have ways
about them;
ways of doing
& of being done;
they bleed
style. They have monstrous
needs; they drink their own milk.
They drip neurosis
freely to mouths greedy
& grateful.

One day the words
will have moved on
to greener pastures--
then it will be over
for me
but not yet.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

IN THE PRIVACY

of my apartment
I find myself
weeping a lot.
I hear about veterans
committing suicide
for stuff their bloated
bellies can't keep down;
I see dogs abandoned
and caged and shivering
and naked beyond their understanding;
I see mothers weeping
from a sidewalk ricochet;
I watch a foreign paraplegic
grasp a diploma and future
between two of her working fingers;
I read a young woman's grasp
of a tilting and incomprehensible world.

I've been a defensive man.
Quick to anger
& quicker to judge.
I've tried to play
it safe and found
no safety in that.
There is some kind of muscle
memory of heroism; maybe
I'm Greek and have absorbed
some ancient blood myths.
I don't know.
But the world has bloomed
despite thoughts of cruelty.
I've seen shapes
seemingly unimpressive
impress most of all.
I'm an old dog
learning how
to become
young.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

YOU SHOULDN'T DO THAT

For A...


to me
on Skype--
or in person
for that matter
--without telling me
to have the paddles
at the ready.
You know
I'm old
& easily
aroused.

Same time
tomorrow?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

THE GOOD & THE BAD

Miss Susie,
as she was called,
or Susannah Mushatt Jones
her birth name as she was known,
died yesterday
at 116 years of age
in Brooklyn; the last
of those born in the eighteen hundreds
in Lowndes County, Alabama.
Goddamn!
I've got
another 50 years (at least) to go
of watching Law & Order reruns
to beat her.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

CAN I POSSIBLY BE

this old?
I don't think so
in spite of all
my body tells me.
I don't think
I am time
& time only--
though I carry
a King's baggage
like a Pullman Porter
in the Georgia summer
heat.
I would like to think
I fuck with time
as much as it
fucks with me:
I can be seven
when I want to,
hanging on a limb
from a garden snake;
or seventeen
& hanging by a thread;
but not the sixty-eight
I am just hanging
around waiting
for the curtains to part.
Only yesterday
my berry browned arms
swung from trees
& my hands held wood
carved to strike a hardball;
my fingers held a pen
meant to seduce
& buck-up a weakened bone.
I can see with clarity
all which came before,
but not a moment after
it all stops.
And where, I might ask,
do we go
then?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

THERE ARE FEW THINGS MORE SATISFYING

than a good
bowel movement
especially
at a certain age.
In fact,
it's one of the few things
to look forward to.

What else
do the young
need to know?

I suppose,
though,
that as long
as they can
blow out
the candles
a hearty
"fuck you"
is in
that breath
as well.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

I MISS

the spongy
sea-soaked
boardwalk.
I miss the white
Converse sneakers
that walked it.
I miss the taste
of warm gin
drunk on the moist sand
holding the hand
of a young girl
anticipating
the first kiss.
I miss double features
on a wet Saturday
afternoon for a quarter
and hot buttered popcorn
and bonbons
and Milk Duds
sticking between teeth.
I miss my top teeth.
I miss my four toes.
I miss her titties
so soft and powdered
by Johnson&Johnson
and I miss being scared
I'd break them.
I miss the first time
I punched my father
& frightened him.
I miss the absence
of memory.
I miss all the bookmarks,
in all the pages,
and all the expectation
that welcomed me
and disinvited the world.
I miss the stupidity
of youth--your youth,
my youth, our youth.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

WORDS

like youth
will, one day,
wake-up
& run;
they'll
take off
for greener pastures.
You'll chase
after them,
instinctually,
& trip
on a memory
or two.

Watch
your
step.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

EVEN THE SIMPLE IS COMPLICATED ENOUGH

I take myself out
for a bite to eat
to the same Greek dive
I've been goin to for 35 years
now. Hell,
been livin in my pad for over 40--
but who's counting?
Nick & Paul,
the owners,
have seen me
in many different states
through many decades:
sober, drunk, young, wild,
old, wild, high, low,
indifferent, maniacal, calm,
pensive and apoplectic.
I've sat isolated
and speechless
or boisterous and boorish.
I've littered their booths
with the scents of women
and love and the smell of
defeats; defeats from jobs,
publishers, women, friends,
and body. What I do,
and who I'm with,
no longer raise their eyebrows
or lowers their lids.
I've eaten their eggs & ham,
bacon & sausages & pancakes,
homemade moussaka, bread pudding,
& brisket, drank their coffee
& stirred their little creamers
& watched their children age
& them grow old.
I've seen favorite waiters & waitresses
farmed out to pasture because their legs
cannot get rid of the water & have ballooned
as big as their waist. The only person
who didn't age
is me.
Neurotics don't age
but hold fast
& hold on.

Today,
I had a hamburger, fries, salad.
It was the same bottle of oil,
the same vinegar, the same tomato
& the same slice of onion; the burger
was thinner, the bun bigger; the fries
still frozen & pretty much
as tasteless as ever,
but the price has tripled.
And why not?:
the farms are dry,
crops roasted,
cows suicidal,
the beef chemical.
The half-buck & buck tip
is now two or three.
Nick & Paul tell me
they'll soon retire;
they're tired of working
for the landlord.
But not me. I can't
retire--I'm a poet.
And poets are not supposed to "work,"
they only have to "live"--
which is the harder,
and more complicated,
of the two
I think I know,
but will never ever
say.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014

SHELF LIFE

You hit sixty
and you start to smell
your expiration date;
and your culture--
if you live
in one of the world's
money jungles
--smells it, too.

If any attention
was paid
to your youth
your youth
has been stamped
and paid for:
Nothing
owed.
It's cruel
and harsh,
I know,
but really
very
unemotional.

I mean,
what can you
really offer?
except wisdom?
and we know
what the world
does with that.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014

WORDS

like youth
will, one day,
wake-up
and take-off
for greener pastures.
You'll try to run
after them
and trip
on a memory
or two.
One thing
I can promise:
your transition
will be made
in your sleep.

Better
watch
your
step.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013