MY PLANKTONIC MEMORIES

are oiled up

& waiting

to be caught

on this,

my merry-go-round,

of fear.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

HEY GOD, WHY DO YOU STILL ITCH IN THOSE PLACES HARD FOR ME TO SCRATCH? AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT, LET'S GET SOMETHING TO EAT

I'm an old fuck. Simple.
Supposed to be wise? Nah.
Supposed to be cool? Nah.
All things that ancients
are said to be, I'm not.
Now, I'm just a nervous wreck,
have to do more
with less.

You'd think
having gone
through a hundred Thanksgivings
with a hundred poisoned arrows
sticking from the breasts of turkeys,
and a hundred Christmas'
using my balls for sleigh bells,
I'd stop asking, "why?"
But you'd be wrong.

Another one of life's suckers
sitting on the edge of my bed
balancing a tit in one hand,
and a ringer in the other.
I hide in the darkness
between dreams watching the frost
weeping on the gravediggers muddy boots.

My weatherman is Lear.
Unlike Rasknolikove,
I've done nothing wrong,
yet want to be punished.
I'm one of few remaining
hip white men: Mulligan
playing with Monk; singing harmony
with Jerry Lawson & The Persuasions;
thinking if I could sing like Roi
onto the white page I could escape
a bleached & bland topography.

And so, here I am,
sitting on the edge of the world
as we threaten to once again
blow it up, but that doesn't
bother me; that has never bothered me;
a recalcitrant fool
is my calling card,
no matter the age.
No,
it's all the people I've loved
who parade by & drift away
when I want to grab & hold.

But I'm an old fuck
with arthritic fingers
juiced with memories
and confusion.

Listen, hon,
I'll have the fries with that
and don't forget the hot sauce, please,
and if you can double bag it
I'd appreciate it--I've got a long way
to go. And
here's a little bit extra,
for you. Thanks...(Usually,
that works.)

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

USE WHAT YOU GOT; USE EVERY ITTY-BITTY THING GOD GAVE YOU OR THE DEVIL SOLD YOU; USE YOURSELF UP

1.

Use it like a gun
or a pocket mirror;
use it like a hairy fist,
or a set of fast thumbs.
Use it
as if your mother is hiding
inside you,
clocking your action,
judging, finger pointing,
wagging her stupid floppy tongue
cursing your infidelity.
Your memories
are simply oiled up
& begging to be caught.
Catch them.
Let the wind
drive them into your bones.
And let your bones rattle
and scatter in God's celestial crap-game.

2.

Make love to your disease--
if you're lucky enough to have one;
it pleases the gods
who thought it wise
to grant you a gift.
Embrace
its confines,
lick the edges
where, as all fugitive lovers know,
lies the sweetness of evanesence.
Your disease
will make you a better liar,
a better fabulist,
a better spinner of tales;
in short, a better artist.

3.

Winter has leaned early
into your crib
and froze your sap.

4.

I am
an old bull elephant
in must...

5.

Since I was a young boy
the fears have come
with regularity; I hold
an empty can of Coke
in one hand
& a Lucky in the other.
Neurosis drips
over the side of the bed
& pools in the can
with the ashes.
They are all useless
except as instruments
like music.
I have sung
the sad meat of my bones
and now gnaw the gristle.

I'll take some hot sauce with that...
make it to go.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

EVERY DAY, A HOT, STEAMY, CONEY ISLAND SUMMER

A carousel of women
encircle my brain;
some demur & lovely
in their tease
& some fierce & subversive,
all locked for a moment
in a terrible beauty
& embrace
of my choosing
what to remember
and why
to remember it.
Eyes wide
with panic--
or is it fear
--proudly prancing
their manes dancing to deities
of visions sung loudly
proclaiming my birth
and my lies.

Yes,
my memories
oiled up
& waiting
to be caught
in this arcade,
this hothouse
of simulacrums

while my mother hides
inside the ride,
clocking my action,
judging,
finger pointing,
wagging her stiletto like tongue,
cursing my infidelities now,
then, and those to come
to term
leaving her free
to pull the levers
and adjust.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

IT CATCHES YOUR GUT

like a fishhook
baited by an old
& patient angler
& deftly cuts you
and out spills
an intestine's worth
of memories; a bowel
of inane blather; a fly ball
lost in the sun.

And there you are
flopping around
on a wet deck
blood smeared & useless
save for your goddamned history:
almost rolling a 300; making it
with a heavy legged waitress
at the end
of her shift; endless nights
and endless breasts and endless beasts
that you commanded and told where to sit
& when...and now
nothing, being tricked
by the cheap lure
of loneliness
as another organ
gets pulled from you and you
can hardly even moan.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

EVERY NIGHT IS DOPE NIGHT

Edgar waits
pen in hand
for his little girls
to visit
bringing
China White.
He sits
next to
a raven colored
sax player
who's trying
not to vomit.

He scribbles
between the cramps.
They hope
they trickle in
before the second set.
Everything's green
in this bucket
of blood
saloon.

Outside
it's snowing.
A white carpet
lays between
uptown &
downtown
on the south side
of heaven,
one stop
from Hell.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

ALL ABOARD

Memory is a motherfucker;
It can't be trusted.
Especially your memory.
Your memory was always
suspect. You know it
and I know it.
Still,
we get on board.
You never know,
do you,
where it's going
or how
it's gonna get there?
It always surprises you--
thinking you're taking the express
& discovering, after the doors close,
it's running on local tracks.
And it ain't being sung
by Curtis Mayfield or Al Green
or The Persuasions; in fact,
nothing's being sung
yet everything is heard
in this melodic atonal cacophony
above the grinding of the wheels.
It's an unreliable train
ferrying an unreliable narrator
whose perfect sense
is unimpeachable.
All those stops
stopped at
and stopped up
and stopped still:
I look for Milk Tit Avenue, but round
Daddy's Bend; try to lower my eyes at
Agony Way; try a detour to Women's Wonder Wheel,
but fall into Judy's Triangle;
jump off Heroin Cliff; get back at Hope Lookout,
and avoid Church Street completely
except in fact while Masturbation Circle
appears again and again but less and less
as the brakes grind down.

Luck
has played a part,
and an absent minded conductor
has not yet punched
my ticket.
Your trip, of course,
is different.
And the seat
next to me
is always
empty.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

FIRE SALE

I'm an old
smoldering
heap, stinking
& staining
& straining
to burn
again
but the fire
is all but
extinguished.
My bones
are ash,
my smell
is wet
& thick
with disgust.
I'm stuck
with memories,
& no discount
seduces others
to take them
off my hands.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

ONCE UPON A TIME

when fire
lit paths
and wheels
were still
to be imagined,
I knew a woman
lovely
beneath her bones.
She was a little feral monkey:
took what she wanted;
ate what she wanted;
and shit where and when she wanted.
She was
a Hell of a gal, but
all things considered
is better off--
way better off
--with you.

I'll tell you
another story
tomorrow;
I promise.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014