LIKE AN OLD MAN

For M

I fell asleep
on my couch
on my birthday
without warning:
one minute
here
next second
gone...
and then
she came.

She came
with a body
by Cezanne
and a Rabelaisian appetite.
I stuffed my dentures in,
wiped my chin from drool,
and got down
to business.

A few hours later
she left
no worse the wear.
I, on the other hand,
was richer by half,
smelling my thoughts
& fighting the curtain
coming down
too soon.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

FUCK AND FUCKING WITH SEVENTY

When I was feeling-up Susie--
twirling her pink nipple
like a juggling fool
and inhaling
her adolescent powder or
gently chalking-up a pool cue,
or releasing a sixteen pound
black ball that rolled
down a slick alley and nestled
into the one/three pocket
turning five into five hundred,
or downshifting a Porsche
into a corner
doing fifty--
I hardly thought
about age or
infirmities,
those little gremlins
of egress and transgress
and impasse.

And now, suddenly,
here I am.
Most of the stuffing
come out
like an old pillow
and I still don't think
about what I can't do
but what I want to get done.

Tomorrow,
I will have been born
for the seventieth time.
And although more happened
during the first ten births
then my last sixty
(if what I hear is true),
and won't remember the final breath,
(if what I hear is true),
I have all the splendid mess
between. The gods
have been more than good to me,
they've been
generous...and
I want more.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

BEING ALIVE

at sixty-nine
makes as much sense
as a deaf & dumb
ventriloquist,
a fountain hidden
in a urinal,
a virgin
giving her lover
skid chains;
a circus
of syringes,
earthworms
who get up
& beg; waves
cresting beneath
the skin.

Sense
& nonsense,
everything
& nothing.
I've been
a heedless
& sometimes headless
man, attuned to only
my heart's trumpet.

Like tonight:
a good-natured whore
helped me bridge
consciousness.
She promoted this semicolon
of calm
that allowed this poem
to write itself
before I test my blood
& take a shot for Hagan-Daz.

Seventy awaits.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

LIKE A KID

Apartment cleaned.
Sneakers shined.
Jacket & pant pressed.
Took a haircut.
Shaved.
Am even thinking
about cologne
for tonight,
tomorrow,
Thursday
& Friday--
dinner, dinner,
dinner & The Vanguard,
dinner & the blues,
--all to celebrate
being on The Savannah
for 67 years
and still hunting
and still
being hunted.

It still seems
so sudden.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014

NOT BAD

Closing in
on 67
is most
astounding
for someone
who was dying
every third
second.
I began
nursing
a type of mania
since eleven
and tried
to push
towards the other side
of the grass
with aplomb,
style
and relish.
I was bad
at living
and worse
at dying--lucky
for me.

I've lived
in a beautiful
neighborhood
for four decades
& tripped
around it
for a decade more;
I've ate well,
smoked some excellent
smoke, excelled at a
controlled excursion
into other forms
of consciousness and
enjoyed a living death
that only heroin offers.
I've heard musicians live
that were alchemists
of sounds; knew painters
who now hang
in places that folks pay
to get into; and have
enjoyed women of every stripe
and persuasion; I've had
gravy's gravy...sweets
that dizzy the brain;
and enjoyed the kinds of lows
that had those black twerlies
dance inside my lids,
making my gut swollen
with pain.

Even this past year,
as exquisite
and agonizing
as it was,
opened ways
unexpected:
it confirmed
a humanity
both stupid
yet profound
which I've tried
in my infinite
grandiosity
to ignore.
But to know love
& loss
& love
again
is something
that will burnish
the one now
who's near
and that can't
be diminished
because it can't
be lost
by accident
or squandered
by chance.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MICK

you sly old
sonofabitch.
He'd be 95
though always
going on 15.
I sound like him,
look like him and,
if the truth be known,
wanted to, and acted like,
I was him
no matter
how far
I wanted to get away
from him,
but never did.
He'll be happy
to know how strong
his genes were
while his presence
was even larger,
not to mention
scarier.

People knew me
by my voice &
my looks: twins,
they said,
we could
have been.
I had the same love
of women, fast cars
& music
as he did;
loved to laugh
in those dark spaces;
manipulative, selfish,
naive and stupid. I got
his fears, too; his blind
spots and gravitated
to a love
of symbols, fools
gold.

I speak to those ninety
year olds now who fought
Hitler & Tojo
on Normandy and the Pacific.
I hear about the Philippines,
Okinawa, and Scofield barracks,
and hear once again
how he bluffed
the other gamblers
out of thousands
in 5 card poker games.
I was the only one
among my peers
who wanted to serve
but couldn't
and pretended
I was lucky.

I only remember
him fighting fat
all his life:
grapefruit diets,
booze diets,
Pritikin, Weight Watchers,
Over Eaters Anonymous,
where he told me
he did the 12 Steps
in a week and a half
and now had "sponsees;"
The Duke fat farm
who threw him out
for smuggling ice cream
through open windows
at night,
or tearing I.V.'s
from his arm because
his store needed to be opened
the next morning
for a family who,
he thought,
needed him
more than what
was good
for them.


I stand here now
wearing my ol' man's watch,
much too big
for my wrist, waiting
also
to die.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014

A NIGHT IN THE HEIGHTS--

My Cubano friend
got a pass
from the shelter
she lives in
to visit her son
for his birthday
& stay overnight.
She has to
get permission
to do those things.
He was about
to turn ten.
She was nervous
about seeing him
and more nervous
about seeing her mom.
Almost a year
had gone by.
She had asked me
a week ago if I could go
with her and after some reluctance
I said, "yes." I've never really
enjoyed meeting a woman's child
and even liked less meeting their folks.

I knew I didn't have to,
but felt stupid
not bringing a present
for the kid. She had told me
that out of his school
he'd been selected
to go to baseball camp
for the summer.
I thought it was good for him
to get out of the dirt&grime&concrete
of Neuva York & smell some grass
& sweet air for a month & bought him
a baseball mitt, hardball, & oil
to work the leather.

The kid's look
was less than welcoming
when he saw me standing
with his mom.
I can't blame him;
he's probably seen many men
standing with his mom,
none of them any good.
Her mom did her best
to hide her displeasure,
but failed.
I could fade an evening,
I thought, and walked
inside. There was a smell
of death there. Her mom
had cancer & couldn't hide
that either.

Still, she cooked chuletas
with red peppers&onions, rice&beans
& plantains, and once the awkwardness
was replaced with the symbols
of love, the air
lifted. Mother/daughter spoke
in a language I didn't know while
her son spoke to his mom in language
I did know.
I took the kid aside when the women talked
and gave him the present; his eyes widened
as only ten year old eyes can & I began
showing him how to loosen the leather by
messaging the oil into it, working and reworking
the give and finally putting the ball into its center,
tying a string tightly around the middle and putting it
under his mattress that night. He listened
as only ten year old ballplayers can.

Grandmothers & great grandmothers
are the guts of this nation,
of this world. It's been steadily
downhill for the past forty years.
Freud was right:
if we don't work out ours and societies neurosis,
the string will slowly unravel for the next
& the next & the next. The fabric
just gets weaker. Cycles
have consequences.

Occasionally,
I peaked at my Cubano squeeze
while she talked with her mom,
both were animated, silent,
demonstrative, waving hands
& arms, shifting positions,
& crying all together, separately,
throughout.
She knew I knew
about medical shit
and asked me over.
I listened
& talked some
& tried to be hopeful,
but realistic. The old lady
was not going to make it
far. I think she respected me
for not sugar coating
what she knew in her heart,
but daughters are another
matter.
It got late,
the kid went to bed,
but not before
hugging me
then burying his head
against his mother's flesh,
kissing her & his grandmother
& saying goodnight.
Alexis walked me out
and we had a few cigarettes
together & spoke.
She needed to get out
of the shelter
& take care
of her own. Enough
time had gone by, enough pain
had been administered, enough people
had been brutalized.
Easy enough
to say,
I know.
When you've been pimped
in some hotel room in Philly
since you turned fifteen,
it's a Herculean task,
but not impossible. No,
not impossible.

She returned to her family
for the night & I walked
the streets of Washington Heights
until I found the bus
to take me all the way downtown.
(Fuck the subways & I didn't give a damn
about time.)
I smoked a few more cigarettes
waiting for the bus amidst the bustle
of a Latino community. I felt
more at home there than I ever felt
on Park Avenue, the upper East or West side,
or most other places. I rested my head
against the glass
and just drifted
as the bus lazily
made its way to the Village.

There are a few people
you want to root for.
There are a few things
you want to think about,
and feel
for as long
as you need to--this being
one of them.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014

I'LL GET THIS RIGHT

eventually.

Gimme
a little time--

Hell,
I'm still young
--double sixes;
a new bud
really,
on the cusp
of sanity.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

MY BABY'S BIRTHDAY

The Betty Poems

is coming up
and in some way,
anyway,
I want to be there--
in person, in voice,
in spirit--
to celebrate it
with her.
Two people in love
should be in love
on days of love--
marriage
sickness
birth
death
Ben Casey
infinity
--and the dross
and dullness
of life.
But we're still
on the outs.
We're behind bars,
murdering
our gift;
we sniff
around our degenerate
lives and invite
misery
to climb aboard
and travel well-worn
arteries and veins
of hummingbirds
inside the cat's
mouth.
Crapshooters
and night crawlers;
pederasts of the cloth
and women angels
of the night singing
prayers of the luck
to the luckless.

As the needle inches
its way toward full
it implies the other
empty. We believe
we have just so much
to give before
it runs out. So,
we remain,
on the outs.
A concession
is worse than death:
somebody wins
somebody loses.
You might think
at sixty-five
I wouldn't give
a fuck.
You'd be
wrong.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013