RUSSIA HAS NOT BEEN KIND

to its artists.
Never has.
But being kind
to artists
is not necessarily
a good thing--
just ask Americans
who get killed
by the fawning over
fame that this country
spits up.
Still,
had I born born
on the vodka tundra,
I would have been
in a gulag
or two
by now
--if I'd stayed alive.
And while that might
have been good
for my art
& the folks
I've fucked-over,
there were a few girls
& women who would have
grown old & died
without my charms
& many good graces
a laugh can provide.

I've gotten emails
from all over the world,
but not from The Red Square--
where a lot of my readers live.
For the sake of the gods
don't write me,
keep breathing,
keep reading,
keep writing,
keep painting,
keep dancing,
keep singing,
& most of all:
keep fucking
everybody
except
(only a little bit),
yourself.
And that,
my comrades,
will make me,
very
very
happy.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

MILES OF MILES

He'd be 89 today.
I'm still surprised
he's dead--I thought
he was too mean
to allow death
to enter
his world.
KCR has
a marathon
happening:
every blow
into his horn
recorded, is aired.
To tell you the truth,
it's a bit much
to digest
in one sitting
like hanging
all the Picasso's
in one room;
Dostoyevsky read
in one sitting.
Still,
it's a grand gesture,
a bow
to renegade genes
of iconoclastic fury.

Please,
don't touch
that dial.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

INFUSED, TRANSFUSED, CONFUSED...BUT COOL

Every once in awhile--
rarely really
--you come across a person,
or a person comes across you:
woman, teacher, friend,
who shares something
of their soul:
words turned
to color turned
to music
til they swirl
and dance
to an unknown
rhythm
wholly their own
and before
you're conscious of it
it's taken up
residence
and lives
inside
of you
too.
Your body moves
differently
from then on;
your brain
discovers new byways
and passages
and chemicals
unsuspected.

All of a sudden
Vachel Lindsey fucks
with you,
or Jerry Hopkins or
his cousin Lightning,
stuffy T.S. becomes a hip
kitty along with Stevens,
Hem and W.C.W.
Louis C dances with Hank B,
they marinate
with each other,
simmer and season,
with Bee and Bach and Gustave
while Cecil, Duke and Pops
and Thelonious tap their feet.

Each time those doors opened
was special: a red scarf
over a yellowish light
in a chambermaid's room
in Provincetown
turned-on Prufrock; a reefer filled,
East Village, tub in the kitchen
five floor walk-up presented Trane;
a long-distance call with Hank
in some L.A. shit hole
freed Jeffers.
Different times,
different ages,
but the same feeling:
getting hard.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013