WHAT DO I DO

now that I'm too old
for love
but not love songs?
What if my tears
are for me
& a world
grown paunchy
& infirm?

I'm not gracious,
I know.
In fact,
more ravenous
as my stomach shrinks
from a diet of memories.

How do you feel
the first kiss
or the last
good one?
How do you breathe
that young breath
of candy-store bought powder
or an educated perfume?
How does your body shiver
when fingers,
other than yours,
unzips you?

It's time to declare
a "Do Over," a "Hindu;"
the ball hit a crack
or was taken by a strange wind
& spun
in a direction
unintended.
I want another shot
at these ancient mysteries.

And who knows?
I might even find you?
Again.
Perched on a ledge
ready to dive
& kindle
a wild river
or have nothing
on your hands
except time.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

A LONG POEM FOR SHORT-TERM MEMORIES

Strength tests
for a blubbery country
its body grown old
fat & full & sloppy
from corn syrup
& sedimentation;
muscles dripping,
arteries slogging,
reflexis dull
& slow and full
of shit.
The light,
if ever there was some,
is a brackish yellow seepage,
it flickers and burns
out. It happens
to all of us: those who dine
on caviar & gherkins,
or those who spooned Mulligans Stew.
It happens to University profs
with their dainty organic salads
and long-distance truckers
sucking down Big Macs & Red Bulls.
We've been content
to have let ourselves go
and segment ourselves for the sellers:
pilferages seven days a week;
footballbasketballbaseball non-stop,
homeshopping, mafia housewives, LA Hair, lock-ups
of the toothless and hopeless and helpless; penny-ante pilferages
of grapes or nuts or toothpaste or toilet paper while we wait
for the weather--rain or a half inch of snow is enough to send us
into paroxysms of anxiety.
Do you need a dick pill?
A nervous pill?
A vaginal cream?
How about sugar pill?
Nosespray?
Neuropathy? Can I sell you a car that can see behind itself?
Can I help you park it? And what about those tits on that anchor woman?
Where is that handsome young man who wants to tell me about Medicare?

The fabric has weakened
as predicted it would.
It is neurosis which has flown
in a widening gyre
while the falcon
trains its eyes
on us.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

DRAGGING OUR FUTURES

through our pasts;
all the silt the dirt the mud
staining a whiteness lost
to memory
is not lost
for long:
the images the music the maybes
are on a loop
and what happens next
is filtered through
your own special
sieve--
much like the days
when you had to strain
marijuana: a clump of shit
into a strainer
and rub
leaving the stems & seeds
while the sticky leaf
fluttered to a newspaper page
on your lap.
You began to gauge the high
by how it smelled
how it looked
but didn't really know
nothing
until you lit the shit
and smoked it:
got a lung full,
held it,
nursed it,
let it out,
and waited.

2017 scares me,
but I gotta
roll it up
and wait.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016