THE ADDITION OF SUBTRACTION

Each day adds
to your diminution
of the life
(of your life!)
outside
of you.

It's nothing to get hung up about;
it's just flakes of dead dry skin
carpeting your next step.

O, yeah, one other thing.
if ya think too long about it
you feel like shit
trying to race down
a fly-papered tube.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

TODAY

I sold
little pieces
of my soul--
Selby, Crews,
Bukowski, Joyce,
Celine, Ginsberg,
Morrison, Roth,
Poe & Jones,
& more
before I had
to get to work
& sell a little more.

By selling them,
I've killed
a little more
of this.

I'll
come home
after work
and look,
and look
again: holes
& scars.

The addition now
is by subtraction;
I'm nearer
than further
& somewhere
there's a
balance.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015