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

THE NATURAL AND UNNATURAL ARE NATURALLY UNNATURAL

THE RITUAL

Trumpet shouts blind
on Rays' disc;
blood gets sucked
up
twice.
Black sun
rise changing,
climbing broken steps
into steam-heated
quinine room:
who'sdat?
meman.
(quiet

dry tongues lick
empty bags
water sque
ezed
gently into cap
match lit (it began before the climb)
draw it
draw it
up (again)
(again
eeez
get it mixed
boot it (once
boot it (twice)
now...
aw,
dat's nice.

That was the way the first day ended.

Norman Savage
Coney Island, 1969

AFTER

Smoke,
after the rain,
rising
from black tar
syrupy streets,
are all that's left,
after
a summer's
lightening storm.

Norman Savage
Coney Island, 1969