THIS THEY KNOW:

For Jason D.

there's always
always always
a game on.
It's a "lock."
They sit back
and gorge
and kill
with impunity:
The NRA strafes you,
insurance companies
bet on suicides;
Big Pharma loads you up
with what kills you
& cures you
& blackouts you;
hospitals divide you
in sections until your heart
can't recognize your balls;
they mangle deer & refuse
to adopt doe';
they encourage the anguished,
the impoverished, the fenced-in,
locked-in locked-up locked down
to believe in miracles
like they're winning tonight,
beating the spread,
going against all odds
because The Knicks are getting 5 tonight
and playing in The Garden against lowly Sacremento
and the Sixers are plus one against Boston at home,
and Sugar Ray is fighting Sugar Free while Sugar's pussy is open to the winner;
and, hey, first pitch is tomorrow and ya never know...

Tonight you have a dinner, a six pack,
and a game--that you know. You know
your bosses prick is back in his pants
and you're back in your crib...safe
at home. The rest of the world
can go and fuck itself--as it
usually does. But first
a message from our sponsor.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

POOR MELO

is at the end
of his career;
it was good,
but it's about over
and that is sad
for any spotlight
that once blinded
but now dims
& soon poof, gone.
What's almost
as bad
is La La
his love
has split,
poof, gone.
Though I really can't
blame her--
Oklahoma hasn't got
one nail salon
to its name.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

FIRSTS:

Asking Maxine out
for a hot fudge ice-cream sundae
when I was six and summoning up
the courage to take her hand
on our secret path back home;
swimming without my father's arms
underneath me & feeling the waters pull;
surfing on asphalt on a tar spun Brooklyn street,
the training wheels off
with only my own power & balance to guide me;
a hardball sliding into my Rawlings oiled glove
and hitting a liquid smart drive on the fat of the bat;
having courage in the darkness
& the high spun arc of magisterial wide screen technicolor
coming on at once like LSD kid style; melted popcorn
oozing between my fingers licking the tips;
the first time my dick moved straight up
all by itself;
the first time I mastered making a bridge
so the pool cue slid easily between my fingers;
the first time the ball touched nothing
but twine and the swoosh it made;
the first touch of silk;
or the smell of my dog wet
from the spring rains;
the first time I saw Corinne
and moved toward her without
knowing why; the first smell
from a mimeograph machine or
gasoline pump, paper solvent
or horse manure or man sweat
after a summer's football game
on the beach; the first pull
on a stick of reefer or opium pipe
and the snake that slithered up
my spine and around my shoulders
and up into my brain;
the first time I realized Coltrane
or Monk or Miles or Billie or Nina;
the first time I knew I really existed
and found the keys into Joyce's pocket;
sighting Diane behind a glove counter & knew
how love can come from behind and mug you.
It has been a long slow kiss
to the fates and it has been
sublime.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017