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

WHAT WOULD BE THE CRIME

if you loved me?
What would you lose
if you lost yourself?
What would you give up
if you gave up
defending against
your ghosts?

I, too,
am a loner
who craves
a lover
when I want; I, too,
am a howling maw
of misery
& trouble; I, too,
am skilled
at the art
& pleasures
of self-flagellation.

One day
we'll meet
on a border
of heaven & hell
& skip
between the two.
We'll have plenty
to laugh about--
our stinginess
with ourselves
being just one
of our follies.
Maybe the next time
we die we will
have really listened
to Hank
and choose to allow
what we love
to kill us.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

ON WRITING: IN THE STRETCH

You've lived
with something
for almost
eight years.
You've loved it,
fought with it,
caressed it,
kissed it,
abandoned it...and
came back to it.
You can't leave it
because
it never left you.

You've aborted
six months of work,
a hundred and fifty pages,
once and nearly a hundred
again; you've played,
at first
with first
person,
then third,then
back to first.
You've made notes
on little scraps
of paper &
on the palm
of your hand;
you've played
in the stream
& of the stream,
you thought
a door opened
and saw it get shut
in your face.
It wanted nothing
to do with you.
It only made you
love it more.

No doubt
my love
of pain
held me
there.
I found that true
for other lovers
as well.
No doubt
there is something
to be said
for isolation
& all the pain
& pleasure
that brings.
There are those
who think
that we writers
are something
special--and we writers
would have to
agree. The truth is
that we're sonsofbitches,
cocksuckers, leeches,
and lovers of pleasures
that have nothing to do
with pleasures
of a more pedestrian
nature. We want
our cake
our fork
our slice
and our fix
and we don't
want to pay
for it in coin,
but in blood.

Now, when I can see
the end of this
I am more miserable.
It means, that soon,
I have to go
amongst you
again. Gimme
a smoke.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

THE FLIP-SIDE

of pleasure/pain
is what interests
me. The hum
of the everyday
puts me to sleep.
I've learned
nothing
from peaceful
or good
things. I've enjoyed
them
at times
but shake-off
the common
for the chaotic
and ugly
every time.

Early last week
was a nightmare.
I was brutalized
by merely living
in this world.
Then came friends
from above
the border
& Carmen
at The Met;
Coney Island
& Totonno's;
sales leading
to safety
for another
month.

All through
this Janus faced
life, I've been
cooking
with words...a hundred fucking pages,
and counting.
Enough
to send
out
to Cynthia
which
I did.
Today she called.
A Saturday.
Terrific,
she said,
I'll rep it
when you finish,
so finish.

I thought I'd stop
smoking
but I won't. Why fuck
with the gods
now?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014