HAVE YOU EVER BEEN DEVOURED

fearing your life
could end here/now
& not caring,
so caught are you
in the moment,
in the white hot cauldron
of madness,
that for once--
& maybe forever--
you & your cannibal lover
are blessedly
speechless?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

COMES LOVE

I love
the helplessness
of it.
Two petri dishes
of madness
under the imperfect eye
of God, strains
to impregnate Spring
in her supersaturated frenzy.
How marvelous to lose control
of reason and lie
under covers cool
with the loveliness of minutes
on a spinning axis of desire.
Relax,
nothing more to do
than what is being
done.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

ACT YOUR AGE!!!

And therein lies
my confusion:
I am
all ages
at all times;
I blow bubbles
as I blow by
reason; I cheat
on common sense tests;
I've found a home
on the cusp
in extremis;
I've indulged
a radical obediance.
I've flown high
on an electrical trapeez
naked, wondering
where the hell the bar is...

Under my pillow
I have a warehouse
of fantasies;
my sock drawer
is filled only
with holes
& secrets; I keep
your breath
inside my own
to shape the glassblower's art.

I need not get
any older
than I was
when a kid;
when madness
was vivid
& possibility
endless, when nothing
made sense
& feeling
& only feeling
suggested
an old & abiding
intelligence.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

IT'S DAYS LIKE THIS

when I'm feeling most fine,
when my body hums
with glucose regularity,
obeying the speed limits
of 80-120 defying its dead
insulin producing organ,
when words dance
like a mad Nureyev
in my brain,
when a woman
is preparing me dinner
while I get my heart
up to speed,
when tragedies zip by
without stopping...
that I most want a cigarette,
a shot of dope,
a whorey woman
with a sick grandmother,
when I want some madness
to descend
on top of my head
crashing like the cymbals
on Elvin Jone's drums;
I want something,
anything,
to show me
who the hell
I am.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

THE SONG OF THE GOAT MEN

White beards
in my bones;
swimming in a mosh pit
amidst realities entrails.
I am Nietzsche
circumcised. To Athene then
carrying blanched barbs
to a trapeze way station.
And there I balance
a dull watercolored world
of sculpture & science
with drunken rapture
saturated in music
birthing its mongrel son: poetry.

I want my madness
to possess your madness
which thrashes and pulls
the leash near snapping.
If I know
where I am I am
nowhere.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

WITHOUT THINKING

a hand finds
the back of my neck
and casually rests
soothing the wrinkles
inside my head
with her fingers
brushing
the tops of drums.
How lovely
is that in
the early evening
as the madness of the day
airs itself out
and a gentleness
eases itself in--
like listening to Al Green
Backing Up the Train.
You pray a little
you will never speak again
or hear any language that can't
be sung.
You know,
of course,
you've done nothing
to deserve this kindness
except live
through another day
of hell.
"Baby,
that feels so good,"
you want to say,
but don't.
Instead you note
the passage of time:
why it feels this miraculous
at seventy
as it did
at seventeen;
and there I am
still bewildered
at how women know
where to touch you
and when.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

Working with the addicted,
the deranged, the borderline,
the schizo affective, the bi-polar,
the recently released, incarcerated,
the twitchy, the nervous, the traumatized,
the treated mercilessly, the tortured,
the stigmatized, the one's whose first word
was no, whose innards boast the picket fences
of fear, too early and too complicated and too monstrous
to look through and too briar rich to get through without
bleeding to death is almost as hard
as loving them.

I should know:
For fifty years
I've made a living
off them & tonight
I'm taking one out
to dinner.

I myself
am one
& divide
against
myself
as tides
come in
& try
to drown
me.

There is something rousing
about jousting with impossibility;
something stirring
when the strings
are struck
in the hearts
of masochists.
Sometimes
they even summon things
of beauty.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

I WOULD WANT YOU

with me
always
watching
Greek fishermen
wearing thick-ribbed
blue sweaters
& watch-caps
wash salt
from their eyes
& talk to me
of childhood
flights.

The Aegean's net
of kelp & foam
catches our brine soaked fingers
like crazy minnows scurrying
between light shafts & toes
while danger plays
across my lower lip
waiting for your teeth
to bite
& coax a ribbon of red
to bathe in.
We can finger paint
each other's name
on our cheeks
in blood
& lick each letter
with menstrual madness.

I will not write again
(to you.)


Until I do.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

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

GOOD WOMEN

were all
too good
for me.
Especially
if they were smart,
beautiful,
& giving.
Eventually,
that combo
spelled doom--
for me
not them.

Madwomen
captivated me:
alcoholics,
pill heads,
head strong
whores
of the senses.
Some
were bipolar,
tripolar,
strung out
& senseless
to the needs
of others--
like me.
They were tipsy
& tortured,
believing they
had it worst
of all
while I knew
no one
could have it worse
than me
dealing
with them.

We were locked
in a dance
of death.
Usually doing a tango
inside the coffin
of our own despair.
It was not without
laughs and its own
magic
& beauty
which held me fast
to my original
breast of
emptiness.

Now,
I most want
a good woman,
a kind woman,
a woman who knows
her strengths
& my weakness:
the self
myself.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

HONEY, I'M HOME,

I'd say,
to the walls.
And, I'd add,
I had a motherfucker
of a day.
I wanted
to put my fist
through every motherfucker
I met
or spoke to--especially
my prick of a boss.

At times
you need a hedge,
a sanctuary,
against the madness
outside
your front door,
or inside
the mosquito net
of flesh
you think
protects & wards off,
but instead flaps
against
the broken
spring.

Not all the time,
mind you,
but right
now.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014