I'M GETTING USED TO DYING

in increments;
how the very air
you breathe in,
ushers yourself
out. Understanding this
is not easy; yet accepting
and playing with it
is both foolish
but inescapeable.
Your first & only love,
the mirror,
has told you
to pack your shit.
Too late
comes change
to change
your mind.
If you're honest
you want more
though there's
nothing much more
left to do
and less than that
to do much with;
another wrinkle
of thought
crisscrosses
across your face
now chiseled as if sense
needs explanations.
My discoverers will learn
the meaning of zero.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

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 LONGER I'VE LIVED

the more I realize
I've descended
from a long & noble line
of idiots, degenerates,
the sick & maimed & mad
& misbegotten; a proud & frugal
fellowship of ne'erdowells,
neandethals, cons & crooks,
brilliantly out of step, awry,
lamposts drunk
with a foul & yellow sheen.
Those who bit down hard
on mother's tit and never managed
to spit it out
almost sure
the milk not spoiled
but magical
& necessary
(for balance?)

I'm near the end of it,
I think, clawing
at the earth
that will have no choice
but to take me back
& give me
cover.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

THE WATER BUG'S DRESS REHEARSAL

scuttered across
linoleum outside
my door
as I left for work
this morning.
It was an ugly fuck:
big & fat & black & brown
with whisper feelers
going this way & that
finding its way
into a kitchen
cabinet, water drain,
bathroom piss stained
shit stained soul stained
corner.
Goddamned motherfucker
as my sneaker clad
two hundred and sixty pound
frame found his beetle
back and stomped the shit outta him;
his liquids flew,
underneath his broken body,
flying to his sides puss green,
purple matted latched upon
the nearest wall's borders.
Bam: back broken, spleen exploded,
lungs busted-out, brain mashed,
eyes popped, ears filled with slime,
arms and legs shattered, asshole
popped. He was gone before
he knew
his name.

I lifted my leg--
just the way
I'd like to go
someday, as I went
to the trains
instead full
of mercy.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

"I'M DYING

to know
the ending.
This
is where
I came
in.
I've seen
this part.
Don't
be
a prick.
Stop
teasing
me.

I can't make
heads
or tails
out of it.
Why
He's kept me
in this crap
game
so long
is
a mystery.
It's
the first
thing
I'll ask Him."

"What do you think
he'll say?"

"Nothin,
that's what.
I don't think
he has
any fuckin answer
either."

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

CRAZY FUCKING GENES

Some of us
have noticed death
early on; that's not
necessarily
a bad thing.
We've lived
a life
almost
as a high-wire act
and was lucky
there were nets
of all kinds
to catch
our hearts
in its hands.

I pushed
& pleaded
on the accelerator.
I dared God
to get me
out
when I wanted
to get out
but he left me
to suck on the tit
of other mortals
who've been there
before me.
Yes,
people around me
died
unexpectedly
yet their deaths
were abstract
while mine
gave me
a kind
of buoyancy.

Now, however,
I notice death
everyday
in my steps
& in my breath.
I take notice
of those who exit
& why. Some
are younger
& some are older
but mostly
they're my age.
Some I've listened to
or watched; some
have even given me
pleasures. I note
their passing
& record their ages:
O, she was sixty-seven--I got her
by a year; he was fifty-nine
& seemed to be healthy, was
an athlete and I have him
by a decade; huh? seventy-three--
I have four or five more years to go.
It's stupid, I know,
to try
& figure it out. Let it
just unfold, I tell myself.
It can't be explained.
Chalk it up
to crazy fucking genes
& leave it go at that,
but I can't
do it--
somebody had to write
this poem.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

PART OF CHAPTER 10--THE DEPARTURE LOUNGE

“You think about dyin?” I continued, “That cross your mind?”

“‘Every third thought is that of the grave.’ Sure I think about it.”

“Ain’t pretty, is it?”

“No, it ain’t pretty…Nobody dies with any dignity, the only thing we can do is live with some.”

“Who said that?”

“I just did.”

“My mom had a tough death, but I don’t think about her much; I think about my old man from time to time.
Him I still think about. My mother was like ice in her cardboard box, just as angry dyin as she was livin, but my ol’ man…”

“Yeah, your ol’ man was a prick, but he had some heart.”

“Yeah, he was a prick, but he did have some heart, and humor, and a whole lotta bullshit.”

“I still haven’t forgotten you not comin to my father’s funeral, man; I was all by myself…”

“I had a needle in my arm in those years…”

“Who the fuck cares how you got there, but you shoulda got there…but my mom went out wearing head-phones, listening to “Ruby, My Dear,” and sucking down Courvoisier.”

“Not bad.”

“No, not bad…I gotta get high now just listenin to you. Why didya take me there?”
He smoked as much weed as I did cigarettes.
“Ah shit, Brazzie: Fucking phone sales?”

“What’s the difference?” he said as he tried to hold down the reefer. “It’s about survival; that’s all it’s ever been about,” he said, as he let it out. “You do the best you can with what you got. Period. End.”

“How the hell do you do that?”

“Not well.”

I wanted to be back on the massage table. I wanted to get high. I wanted Tina’s hands on me again. I wanted a spike in my vein. I would have settled for Hillary Clinton’s hands…no, no, not them, but somebody’s. Maybe a Percocet?…an Advil…Bayer, anyone?

“You’ll probably be good at it…”

“Oh, yeah…”

“Yeah, Heller; you spent your whole life honing your bullshit and now you have those poor fucks who have no one to talk to, who’s dying to have a conversation with somebody, anybody, to listen to you.”

“That’s great, man, thanks for sharin that…Sure, where the fuck they goin?…I’ll tell ya where I’m goin though—I’m goin ta bed…I’m gonna lie down, put a period on this fuckin day.”

“It’s a semicolon, Heller. It’s only a semicolon.”

(39-40 of pages 539) 


THE GHOSTS

in my fingers
summon her
animus;
I straddle
her grave.
I've killed her
enough
to mistake
the living
for the dead.

Who
but the loved
know
how many deaths
it takes
to make
a life
together?

Each shadow,
a poem.
Each poem
a shadow.
Let my loves,
the ones
wielding knives,
& machine guns,
cannons,
& bombs,
even words,
step forward--
I'm ready...
for the blindfold.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015