SWEETENED BY LIES

memory fattens the spinal cord
where six plays with sixty
as if they were friends;
as if they could be anything more
than taunts down windy corridors
towards obsolescence.

It requires a backbone
dipped in brine
to make clean the letters
caught between teeth;
who knew the greed of infants
would swirl now around
a wizened & gristled mouth
with the stump of a sentence
caught in the throat
as I try to announce,
loudly, on the birth
of my ways.

It is here
in the cave
of cravings
where you hear
a nurse mention
cures, but this
is no time
to test theories.
You will have to do
whatever is available
for now, advancing
in the dark
toward desire. Hurt
is part of it, as is
the buzz of flies.
You do not smell
beginnings here,
only a charnel house
of a life
yet to be lived.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

ONCE THE TRAIN HAS LEFT THE STATION

you're fucked
or liberated,
sometimes both;
having little choice
but to ride that sonofabitch
'til the next stop.
But once your body calms
to that existential delemma
a voice
is able
to snake through
the clickity-clack,
the grinding metal-on-metal lullaby,
the hip-hoppers & be-boppers,
wails of the crazed or soon to be,
and it's your voice,
faint as it may be
it's just loud enough
to elbow its way
to the front of your forehead
making you deaf to all other sounds
save this
and it's a memory
once distant, perhaps,
but now pulling on your mind's tit
like it's the only tit in town.
And you realize
just how parched you were
for this memory
just this memory
sour or sweet
matters less
than nothing.
All you know
is thirst.

And so you ride. You ride
with your mother's accusations
and your father's back of his hand;
or you ride with their warmth
and sensitivities to your needs;
you ride with the girl you have
or want to have; you ride
with your failures or conquests:
that brtoken-bat hit bottom of the ninth,
or buzzer-beater; you ride
with a slip of your tongue and a look
on the face of someone who loves you,
who would sooner harm themself,
with incredulity at your brazen cruelty
and of not realizing who you are sooner...
and then
the train
slows,
levers are pulled,
brakes hiss,
air emits,
& the next station announced,
but it's not your station;
in your heart of hearts
you really have no station;
and almost allow a laugh,
but that would smack too much
of melodrama, a cheap perfume
for the untalented, but still
there is time, you think, and so
you allow yourself to be teased,
to be jostled toward the door,
flirting with fucking with your mind's disorder
at the border between stops
but don't make it, instead finding
yourself a seat.

Then, without warning,
just as your ass is about
to meet the plastic cradle,
it leaves you, this memory,
but not before a wisp of its color
nestles in your flesh.
And there it will wait,
but not for long,
for others to join
on this pilgrimage
to the next stop
& the stop after
& the one after
that. And maybe,
just maybe
at the end
they'll be a rainbow
of memories
instead of the usual
flood of cul-de-sacs
awaiting the next
train ride
to somewhere
to do something
with someone
you have no memory
of now or
ever.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

MY PLANKTONIC MEMORIES

are oiled up

& waiting

to be caught

on this,

my merry-go-round,

of fear.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

A SORT OF PLEA

Doctor, I've lost
my connective tissue--
have you seen it?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

THE LOVE SONG THAT IS HEROIN

is like a Billie & Lester duet...

is like sin caressing the anxious blood...

Her nipples sore
from her baby's greed.
She knew he'd grow
into his need
and take advantage
of every extended tit
and suckle until enough warmth
lined his belly...

My flesh
awaits yours;
my lips taste
your taste.
An old man
whose memories
are almost as dry as a twig
yet spill what little sap is left
into a feverish enterprise
of grief.
History's bastard,
a slow rendition
of want...

I know I'm a sucker
for pain,
and have a cavernous sweet tooth
for memory.
And what else is memory
if not a seductive trip
down a mine field
that always leads
to loss...

Now these old bones rattle
from a barren cold
and what else
beside the blast furnace
of a flower
that swells & drips its honey
into a spoon that swirls
the spillage of time
into a hot brew
that thaws & forgives the mind
while it coats & soothes
the stomach
will suffice?

Just leave me alone
& let me drift...
on a reed.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

IT STILL WORKS

I called a hooker number
last night. She was happy
to hear from me,
she said. (I would like to think
that was not part of the act.)
Lucky, for me
she was free.
It's not all that often anymore
that desire is in synch
with the gods of availability.
I had enjoyed her company
and her other gifts
from the first time we met
and was willing to wait
for the stars to align.

I asked her over
and after some easy chitchat
we got down
to business.
I was easy; an old man
makes few requests
and even less demands.
But I was a hard nut to crack;
age and medical issues
with my hardheadedness
to heed the warnings of doctors & priests
made endings more difficult to get to--
but that was what she signed up for.
We worked & worked--
she doing most of the working;
as we teased & explored
with a practiced easiness
that, viewed from a distance,
could be mistaken for love.

Afterward,
we exchanged pleasantries
& promised to get together
sometime soon.
Her lovely perfume
trailed behind her
as the door closed.
I was satisfied
& pleased
that my dick,
looking much like a wrinkled spigot now,
still worked...and yet sad
that it wasn't the thrill
of a time gone by
when I was body & soul in love
with a girl from above
the north border
and tumbled & tumbled
into each other
and never gave a shit
whether it worked
or not.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

STICKY-NOTES

for your brain
comes preinstalled
from the manufacture
at no extra cost
to you; some work
and some do not--
as to why
we don't know.
They're boxed
& layered
with general divisions
& sub-divisions
like: Family,
Lovers, Sex, Food,
Pleasures, Pain,
Betrayals and
Not Yet Named and some
are left blank
with possibility.

Today, it was cancer
& The Babe & his daughter's death
at the age of 102.
I never had cancer,
never knew The Babe
and didn't know his daughter,
but I did have diabetes
and thought a lot about,
and gravitated toward,
dying & death at 11
seemingly going forward.
The Times had Julia's demise
noted & all I had to do
was click on it & there I was
at 12 remembering
The Babe not able to eat
the white of a hard-boiled egg
without blood
gushing from his gums
& pain indenting his body
into a jolting question mark.
My note had many
traumatic question marks:
how was I going to die?
how messy would it be?
who would be there
to hold my hand
and get me
from this place
to the next?
I was able to see
the starched white nurses'
starched white uniforms,
smell the disinfectant,
taste the bile
of fear, and fear
each minute yet to come.

I read his bio
61 years ago,
but it stuck
somewhere
in the stack
under Health
maybe Dying
maybe both.

Breathing
after the first breath
is dangerous.
It should come
with instructions
or warnings--
but then again,
no. they shouldn't--
it's a crap shoot--
let's leave it
at that.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

NO, I DON'T FORGET MUCH

& I don't forgive much,
& so,
I don't have much--
except much to say
which really
isn't much
to speak of.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

I SOUND LIKE AHAB

walking the deck
of The Pequod.
I thump
up & down
the empty stairs
of my brownstone
with my cane
sounding my own
particular madness
raging at God's
insensitive deafness
& my brown & drying
departed youth;
a body
in the midst
of rebellion
& decay.

I will give any man
this enigmatic gold doubloon if,
with this harpoon,
forged by a devil's fire,
to find for me
a memory
that doesn't speak
in simple sentences,
but rhapsodizes in soliloquies
righteous of prosaic complications--
going one step
to the next,
going out
& coming home
& warming myself
by the word furnace
of make believe
so elementary
& so endless.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

I DO

love
to torture
you
anyway I can.
The disease
of memory
makes it easy
to gain entry
& allow you
to do the rest.
Be a good girl
& open
the door.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

TAKE ME HOME

A first scent
of a rose petal's blush
on warm flesh
when ill;
the blood splatter
from love positioned
around the dinner table;
french toast nursed
by arthritic fingers
puffed with butter & cinammon;
fears running up & down
the broken vertebrea
of a family's spine;
nerves scattering
like mice
caught in a cat's eye;
a belly laugh
at our own imbecilities;
a warmth girding
all our failures;
and safety,
yes safety,
safety as each of us
walked a netless
wire.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

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

FIRSTS:

Asking Maxine out
for a hot fudge ice-cream sundae
when I was six and summoning up
the courage to take her hand
on our secret path back home;
swimming without my father's arms
underneath me & feeling the waters pull;
surfing on asphalt on a tar spun Brooklyn street,
the training wheels off
with only my own power & balance to guide me;
a hardball sliding into my Rawlings oiled glove
and hitting a liquid smart drive on the fat of the bat;
having courage in the darkness
& the high spun arc of magisterial wide screen technicolor
coming on at once like LSD kid style; melted popcorn
oozing between my fingers licking the tips;
the first time my dick moved straight up
all by itself;
the first time I mastered making a bridge
so the pool cue slid easily between my fingers;
the first time the ball touched nothing
but twine and the swoosh it made;
the first touch of silk;
or the smell of my dog wet
from the spring rains;
the first time I saw Corinne
and moved toward her without
knowing why; the first smell
from a mimeograph machine or
gasoline pump, paper solvent
or horse manure or man sweat
after a summer's football game
on the beach; the first pull
on a stick of reefer or opium pipe
and the snake that slithered up
my spine and around my shoulders
and up into my brain;
the first time I realized Coltrane
or Monk or Miles or Billie or Nina;
the first time I knew I really existed
and found the keys into Joyce's pocket;
sighting Diane behind a glove counter & knew
how love can come from behind and mug you.
It has been a long slow kiss
to the fates and it has been
sublime.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

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

SCRUBBING THE STAINS

cannot help
but leave a stain
but that stain
is smooth
like a chalk outline
around a dead body.
It's been hard
work but I've had help:
my ex has never called;
the nut from the north
has kept her distance;
I've had no uninvited
knocks in the middle of
the night; my parents
are dead and I've buried
"the bad
with their bones;"
and my brother
has trouble
of his own
that I,
unfortunately,
can't help with.
All in all
this past year
has been better
than good
for me; so good
that at times I believe
something bad is close
at hand.

I still make mistakes,
plenty of them, but
they are new,
too.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

SOMETIMES IT'S SO STAGGERING ALL YOU CAN DO IS WEEP

There is a point
rusted inside you
that is reached
when words collide
with your history;
they freeze
& bleed
into your next breath.
Time dissolves.
Pain
which was muted
& runny congeals
& engulfs.
You are lost
inside your flesh
desperate for air;
your defenses
useless;
your rationalizations
in neat boxes
of misery;
your reason
banished; your control
dismissed
as folly.

Hold tight,
my friends.
This visitor
doesn't stay
for long
because
it never left.
It's just reminding you
it's hungry.

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

I DROP WORDS

like breadcrumbs
so others
can find their way
to my home and I
can find my way
back.
It is a two-way
highway
of neurosis
on a one way
blacktop.

Men
are so obvious,
needy
& weak;
women
so devious,
cunning
& cruel.

Woods
emit light
from the center
of a sorcerer.
The evil parent
has been killed;
the house licked
clean. Bite marks
lace veins
in the finest filigree.
Memory
is the killer.

I no longer write
from instinct
but intention.
You've captured
me and we both
remain lost.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

SEMICOLONS

are the mind's hinge,
a swinging door
always oiled,
they allow memories
to pool, a synaptic
broker between
Amy's ass
& cold Jello,
a night spent
searching
for a fix
and fixing
a flat
on a Montana highway
under a hot unforgiving sun.
An inner loop
that spoons against
what was flesh
or taste or smell or touch,
a sweet nipple's sip
of scotch and a drunken stroll
home, a different home,
than what was home
a moment ago.

It's a messy detachment
and a cool be-bop prose.
It hedges your reckless bet
knowing the dealer cheats.
It's her thigh
and her leg, her laugh
above her heart, her mind
fondling her breasts
when I stole glances
between boardwalk slats
of pink panties
and black curly hairs
curling around lace
before I called an eight ball
in the side pocket.

It's reading aloud
to hundreds while fearful
of a question, of wasted
decisions and hours shit out
like so much glad handing
to time's curse. Distance
is a lie to manage movement.
Each moment brings
its own semicolon.
When in doubt
you should use one. Welcome
home.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

CAN I POSSIBLY BE

this old?
I don't think so
in spite of all
my body tells me.
I don't think
I am time
& time only--
though I carry
a King's baggage
like a Pullman Porter
in the Georgia summer
heat.
I would like to think
I fuck with time
as much as it
fucks with me:
I can be seven
when I want to,
hanging on a limb
from a garden snake;
or seventeen
& hanging by a thread;
but not the sixty-eight
I am just hanging
around waiting
for the curtains to part.
Only yesterday
my berry browned arms
swung from trees
& my hands held wood
carved to strike a hardball;
my fingers held a pen
meant to seduce
& buck-up a weakened bone.
I can see with clarity
all which came before,
but not a moment after
it all stops.
And where, I might ask,
do we go
then?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016