HAAGEN-DAZS IS THE ONLY PUSSY I LIKE TO LICK NOW

for Joey Skaggs

You don't have to worry
about freshness
or taste; it is youthful,
unlined, uncreased, unencumbered;
it's not etched
by experience
and so its face
does not snarl
or bite
from wounds inflicted
by those whose hands
and head and cock
had got there before
and staked claim.

The Dazs tells you nothing
about parents
and boyfriends
and ex-husbands
planted or not; there's no mention
of friends
who've betrayed them
or who ask
for more
than they give;
there are no jobs
and so no bosses
who grab at their ass
or their time
and stake claim to your time
by having you hear
their little betrayals after
a day of your own.
There's no risk
of syphilis, chlamydia,
yeast
or urinary infections;
no pounds
they have to shed;
nowhere they
have to be.
They do not care
what you've eaten
before you get to them,
nor what it is you're watching
as you wait
for them to soften
(or that you're already soft for that matter).

At my age
I do not care for arguments,
only to stay alive
a little while longer
to catch some more grace
from the gods. I still need
something
to soothe
and morphine and booze
demand too much
of my time
and money.

At one time
I was in love
with the chase,
the battle
of wits,
the jousting
in new mirrors
in strange bathrooms
where the souls
of women are hung
and displayed.
I loved the conquest
and sometimes love
that lasted as long
as two people
having compatible neurosis
would let it.

But now I like my love
measured
in pints
that are easily
replaceable.
If I got five bucks,
or ten,
and I usually do,
I can pull a pint or two
off the frozen shelf
and take it home with me.
I will not have to hear
about the day,
about the kids,
about the disappointments
or the disillusions.
And I will not have to hear
about all the things,
many things,
different things each day,
I'm not doing.
But could do.
If only
I cared--which I usually never did.
I just put them
in the freezer. And there
they'll wait
until my need becomes desire
and I'll strip them bare
and devour them
with a cultivated
style.

Older men
have their ways.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2011

YEATS AS PISCICULTURALIST

Autumn falls upon
wintered souls heated
from deceptive springs' child
summer. Aprils fool
is us;
in October, almost able
to see an end it is hard
to sense a beginning--though it frolics
on our soon numbed fingertips.

Liquid dreams,
seasonless wants
left aching in steel sun rays
breaking mirrors and nights warm
wetness. a woman
who's body torments me,
who's face eludes me, yet
I anxiously lower the lid
on something I wish to control,
but can't.
my second self
oozing
and fused
into tonights workshop.

I see fishermen
in dried-out streams
up to their thighs
in illusions
of being where the fish is
but isn't. they have not moved,
waiting for the fish' return,
refusing to believe that water
must preceed them.
my page is as naked
as a single word
and as painful
as a warm image
fading.
how we slide
into safetys structured pretense.
what's outside those black plaster-board walls?
(I don't care.
it's not safe.)
byzantium's daydream, inside
the razor resting bubble,
is somehow less real that still waters'
circles. we bathe in the scented oil
of fantasy in times cruel seconds hanging
on the edge of hourly panics.

Poor W.B.
looking at his limp ego
and jumping
into a one-paddle canoe
that had nothing cept leaks.
good poetry
does not make
a good woman,
eh?

Norman Savage
New York City, 1972