EVERYDAY YOU PASS BY

everything you need
to know

about everything
there is.

II

Residues.
Kick ball
then doorways.
A darkness
is at the top
of the stairs,
but money too.
Need
is your gravity
today.

III

Dreams
in a book
bag.

IV

I gave you
a hundred,
I know
I gave you
a hundred,
I only had
a hundred
and now,
I don't
have it
anymore.

V

I fell
in love
when I
was little
and now love
sucks the life
out of me
as I grow
impatient.

VI

One should look
harder
at what
one knows.

VII

Her dress
has its first stain
of journeys
to come.
His lips
hang
over his teeth
like shadows.

VIII

Slugs sun
in the summer
slime;
they have
no job
yet.

IX

Vespers
from a Harmon
mute; a jazz
musician
fingers
the hem
of a garment
whose mother
doesn't know
where she is:
this circle,
this time,
now.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

PRIVACY...AT A PRICE

For all my Russian readers...

There's me
buying a vacuum
on Amazon; there's me,
again, watching
a gorgeous chick vacuuming
thirty-five cocks
into her mouth
on my Mac.
O, look,
me again
buying a children's tea-set
on Target
for my granddaughter
who lives on Crete and me,
once again,
an hour later,
copping some oxycodone
from a Mexican outhouse pharmacist site
on my smartphone.
I feel so important
being tracked
& looked after,
like a president
in a palace.
And really,
there must be
better porn,
& better drugs,
& better prices out there
and why would I want
to use all my precious time
finding them?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

MELANIA

loves me
she said,
but can't fuck
with her prenup.
That's OK
with me:
married women
are safer
married
(not to mention
richer).

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

CALLING ALL BLACK FOLKS

You got a shot with Bernie.
In fact, more of a shot
than you had with Barry.
You got an old grandpa Jew
with a righteous pitchfork
up his ass; it's been touching
his heart
from the time he knew
it had a beat.
He needs you now
to keep breathing.

You all know
unless you get some serious
redistribution, you'll be dead
by the time another white man
comes along to help you
change a tire; get out of jail;
get a job, an education; a room
with a view.

FUCK THE ACADEMY AWARDS.

FUCK EASY DISTRACTIONS.

FUCK ENTERTAINMENT.

It begins
and ends
in this country
with money.
And any black person knows:
if you don't get your money straight,
you're a fool.

Calling Ta-Nahisi, calling Spike,
calling John Lewis & Ramsey Lewis
(& Sinclair Lewis), calling Denzel,
and Michael and Magic and Toni
and Oprah and any and all Negro
Negra Black colored oreo mulatto
Spic & Span Latino Hispanic Mexican
who knows how to rub
two nickels together
to get on board for this guy
and stop bullshitting
about what you don't have.
If you let that fake ofay
sax player and his trifling wife
have their day
your day
is yesterday
and yesterday
is nowhere.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

PROSTITUTES, PARASITES...AND YOU

"Name me someone who's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him."
--Visions of Johanna
--Bob Dylan

Artists
are the worst:
sucking your blood
or sucking your cock;
there's Dante's circles
and your family
and closest friends;
then there's Nature
sucking up
your carbon.
We are each other's ticks,
and gnats and mosquitoes,
bedbugs and crabs and bacteria
alive on the skin,
grabbing on to mucous
membranes, intestinal linings and tissue,
picking the pockets
of students and clients,
husbands and wives,
children and grandchildren.
It's the daisy chain
of moves and countermoves.

Prostitutes sell themselves
short. They never factor in
the cost of putting a cost
on their time and time
really is
our most precious
commodity.

One day
the title
of this poem
will be a course
at The New School's
Adult Division.
Folks will pay
hundreds of dollars
to suck the wisdom
out of text & totem
and philosophize
meaning. They might
get together
after class
to discuss
the discussion
they had
a minute ago
and suck
some more.
They'll go home
eventually
with a little less
blood and a little more
illusion. It's our own
soap opera, our only station.
And I'll be back
same time
next week.

Stay tuned.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015