THE UPTAKE OF GOING DOWN

Rivers run
through the cracks on my mirror.
Black spaces between dreams
have been taken hostage
by reality's sideshows.
Once we wore baby powder,
and now we smell from time's stamp.
Not that it hasn't been fun;
playing hide 'n seek with myself
required courage
and the blessing
of stupidity; seeking
what I couldn't see; listening
for that half note
that made sense...
like the foreignness
of my family's dinner table
when I was too young
to understand what war was
let alone how
to negotiate a truce.

Flowers call to the sun,
but I'm no longer a flower.
Instead, I'm the petals falling
"with a dying grace," mocks my awkardness,
and "so softly as to not make a sound,"
rebukes my moans
as I prepare
for what might not be:
a dress rehearsal.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

THE QUESTION

You think
you're hip
& fast
& because
I smell you
I know
you're there.

I don't know nothin
of the kind.

I don't know why
your eyes
are hungry;
or why
your arm
looks like perferated paper
dotted red.

Come off it,
you say,
& fuck me.
Just a second,
I answer,
it's cookin.

Norman Savage
Coney Island, 1969

SAXIFRAGE

A code of valor--
we slay too many dragons
in quest for a fair maiden
that more often than not
stays in her ivory tower
far from the clutches
of a saintly suitor
who pants
far below
waiting
for her word
to climb.

an insipid hunter
waits
outside the coliseum
with hands clasped,
mouth watering
demanding a soul
for a Roman heart--
We are all gladiators
awaiting
a lion.

Norman Savage
Coney Island, 1969