YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, MAN

I shouldn't have to be doing
this shit,
I was famous, man,
I was happening, I was smoking,
I wrote, man, compared to Kerouac,
published, sang my song
to pretty coeds,
I did shit, I fucked a million women,
man, drove fast cars, spent money
like nobody's business,
shot junk, poured booze
over the fires, palled around
with movie stars, famous poets,
musicians, models, bankers & brokers
of power & peasants & jail birds & Jews
& jealous husbands & prima donnas & politicians
& stray cats & mistresses & madams & wanna be
killers & cops & trauma surgeons.
This, this, this, this, is so
not me, so not what my hand
calls for would be a joke if
it was a joke but it's no joke,
it's a yoke, a weighty stifling soul murdering
conceit around an aging diamond.

Aw, fuckit,
lemme make
the next
call.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

MEMORIES ARE MADE OF BULLET-PROOF GLASS

For Diane

You stamp
and kick
and twist
around my swollen soul
while I curse
my bloated belly,
ankles and heart.
You know how much
your beauty haunts me.

Hang
the picture
so that it can,
of course,
be studied.

(Student's
are hip
to that

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 1978-2013