IT WOULD BE SILLY

One For the Old Geezers

to try
& lie
to you
now.
You know
I'll try.
I know
I'll try.
I promise
to resist.

Some
have noticed
a diminishment
of poems
of late.
Some
have even
inquired.
No,
I tell them,
it's the gods
that destroy
& make men mad,
not I. I am ready
I assure them
and am merely
waiting like any
good Christian
to receive
what is given.
I tell them,
take heart,
I still want to fuck
every woman I see,
& more importantly,
they want to still fuck me.
(I'm sure they know,
as I do,
that's only half true).
Yes, I still imagine
nipples naked with need
of varying length
& sweetness & color;
yes, I still taste
different heated nectars of emissions.

And the words still come
but slower; better,
perhaps, but slower.
And memories perfect
in their lies, pile up
on runways waiting
for this infernal fog to lift
but stubbornly clings
to the sides of wings preventing
full flight:
fully in control of exceleration,
the Porsche obeying my instincts,
leaning into a corner at fifty,
a magician's inner stroke
of light's genius;
the proper word to light
the inner demons of a cueball
& bank life's mystery & madness--
a sweet narcissism
of self-serving
excellence.

There will be
more poems,
good & bad
after this;
how many
is not for me
to say.
I'm sure
"slowing down"
is an "art"
too, but one
I haven't
mastered
yet.
I've been too busy
trying to work
on it.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

PAIN HAS NEVER FELT THIS GOOD

I've been trying
for years now
to get away
from her
gravitational field;
I do not have
the propulsion
necessary
or, perhaps,
I lack
the will?
No matter
why; it is
what it is.
Everything I do
or don't do
I do
or don't do
with her
in mind.
It's madness
most beatific
in a wood dark
and winding.

There has been
explorations
of different planets,
different bodies,
different climates,
different names.
I've been indifferent
to their danger if,
indeed, they presented
danger at all.
Somewhere in my core
I must have known
that her madness
would arouse and inspire
my own and give rise
to a poetry of fevers.

It is the mirror
of adolescence
that I stare into.
A demon stares back:
young, heedless,
reckless (but alive!)
Pain has never felt
this good.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015