MY BLOCK

used to be hot:
Dylan Thomas drank himself
into St. Vincent's;
Delmore Schwartz
dreamt himself into suicide;
Eleanor Roosevelt funneled
her tits into a D cup
& her lesbian lovers;
Melville & Twain & Poe
scraped horseshit from their boots
& ambled and rambled about America
& God & sea journeys;
Pollock & deKooning
had fist fights
over brush strokes & pussy,
while Rothko thought of black
colors & early death while Klein
the black & white firmnament.

Now...
there are bankers
& banks...& kids
who still smell of piss
& freshly minted credit cards.
You,
or your parents,
have to be rich--
7 dollar ice teas,
& 15 dollar a pound laundries
demand no less.
"Art" is no longer a subject
but a laugh.
And I
can't get
a hardon
over much,
much less
poems
like this.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

THE NUTCRACKER

Tonight,
I was on the phone
pushing Nutcracker tickets
to Philadelphia mothers
& fathers & grandmothers
grandfathers & uncles,
aunts, nieces, & those
who remember
or want
to remember
what it was
to be five
& frivolous
& wondrous
&, most importantly,
unencumbered
by adults
& their
bullshit.

I can remember
once asking my ol' man
to take me to see
The Nutcracker.
He took me by my little hand
and led me into his bedroom
where my mom
was in one of her darker moods.
There she is, he said.
Little did I know,
I got a front row
seat.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

YAKYAK, YAK, YAK, YAK

I've been listening
to their bullshit
it seems
all my life:
"I can do that, too,
only better";
"You think that's sompthin?
I got a book in here you won't believe,
& when I write it, it's gonna be sompthin,";
"That ain't good, I got sompthin really good,";
"I"m gonna paint
& when I do"...
"That's not a song,
I got a song"; or
"If I ran the company,
or the government, or
the world, then you'd
see"...
And the poor fuck
who's doing all
the listening
nods and agrees
that, yes,
they do have a book
or a painting
they just need to let
their inner beauty
show.

But it never is
is it? It never
shows; it never
gets done.
They whine
& bitch
& bellyache
about the unfairness
of life;
about how they would
if they could but life
is conspiring
against them:
it's a kid,
or a job,
or a car
breaks down,
or a tooth
needs to come out,
their stock is down,
but the market is up,
their mothers
& fathers, sisters
& brothers ask
too much
& give
too little;
they're sick
or despairing,
vacationing
or suiciding.
They're mis-
understood,
or mis-
diagnosed.
They've taken
too much dope
or not enough.
Their time
is circumscribed
by circumstances.

I'm getting quite sick
of them. The truth is:
they're full of shit;
they're not talented;
they've taken no risks,
sacrificed nothing
to do anything difficult
except get the ear
of a lesser human.
And don't tell me
about women having kids,
or men sprouting their seed
to procreate them
that that's creativity--that's
a rigged game.
Fuck that.

Oh, Savage,
you might say,
who the fuck are you? You
just write these inane
little poems about stupid
little subjects which are
mostly about yourself
& think you're such a big deal.
I can do that, too.

Ya see? Ya see?
That's what I mean.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014

MEDITATION ON RACE & BULLSHIT

We are waiting
on Lebron
to make a decision
tonight
on our national sports
platform.
Ho hum.
He'll decide
to play
on any one of five
hardwoods in major
commercial markets.
Whatever decision
he makes
will make me sad;
sad for the souls
of all black folks
and sad for the white folks
who's souls were black
who's assholes
he's fucking
without knowing
he's fucking them.
I think of Jack,
fingers in the cunts
of blond broads,
gold teeth blinding
the eyes of cops;
Joe & Sugar Ray,
Jack Robinson, & X,
& MLK, & Marcus & Stokely,
Roi/Amiri, Spike & Chris;
white Jews who traveled
South, placed barricades
& dodged dogs
& clubs; Abernathy, Ashe,
Ali, Dundee, & LBJ that Texas
shitkicking ballbreaker.
All that work; all that
blood; all that grief; all
those lives. For what?
So that we now have a new vaudeville
filled with entertainers?
New blackface. New dancers & partners &
singers of tunes
so easily forgotten like Chinese food
on a Sunday.

It seems the worst
of the white race
have won.
They've taken the best
of rhythm, dance, speech,
sound, colors, grace, strength
and style and breathed it in
and exhaled a corporation,
a label,
a signifier,
a signature,
that lures us into
the worst sleep.
It has given us Lebron
and Barack;
nice enough people, perhaps,
but without edge,
without courage,
without heart.
I look at the ghettos,
the schools,
the prisons,
the six o'clock news,
and see further erosion
of most things
black without barely a glance
a word
from our president.
He has been deft
at using his race
to avoid it
while signifying it.
The country
and the world
as is
deserve no better.
We've known
for a long time
what is right
and made a left
turn.

Ho hum.

I had hoped
against my wish
not to hope
that Lebron
and some of the others,
would have stepped forward
and played for MJ
in Charlotte
for, if they had to,
slave wages:mere
millions.
Not because I'm especially fond of MJ,
which I am,
but because he could use their help and
he's black. The first
black owner
in NBA history. Maybe some think
that's no longer something,
but it is.

Watching the Celtic/Cav series,
I saw Lebron collapse
from a champion's stress;
they took his heart
and stopped it.
He was a long way from Ali
not stepping forward or
coming out for the last round
in Manilla.
Lebron looked
like he wanted to be taken out.
Fuck em,
I said to myself,
and moved on.
Now,
this most favored of gifted athletes
wants money
and championships
and will create
the most direct line
to get them--
and he will.
And in these times,
he will be idolized
by millions,
if not billions
who have
the memory
and heart
of a flea.

Ho hum.
Pass the salt.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2010