EVERY DAY, A HOT, STEAMY, CONEY ISLAND SUMMER

A carousel of women
encircle my brain;
some demur & lovely
in their tease
& some fierce & subversive,
all locked for a moment
in a terrible beauty
& embrace
of my choosing
what to remember
and why
to remember it.
Eyes wide
with panic--
or is it fear
--proudly prancing
their manes dancing to deities
of visions sung loudly
proclaiming my birth
and my lies.

Yes,
my memories
oiled up
& waiting
to be caught
in this arcade,
this hothouse
of simulacrums

while my mother hides
inside the ride,
clocking my action,
judging,
finger pointing,
wagging her stiletto like tongue,
cursing my infidelities now,
then, and those to come
to term
leaving her free
to pull the levers
and adjust.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

SUMMERTIME

For PP--each in our neighborhood's jungle

To be smoking reefer
& sipping a beer
on a hot stoop
cooling our heels
is one of the more sublime favors
bestowed in this concrete womb
of a city amidst the squalls
of summertime heat.
Poems are squeezed
from the sewers;
love is laced
in this Petri dish
of hard won escapes.
Each other's dreams
drips down the sticky legs
of denim & popsicle sticks.

You live within
windowsills of fame
and home has become
a bed of thorns.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

THE FULLER THE LIPS

http://bit.ly/29rfvM1

the more traps they set
or fall into; yours
is as ripe as a Georgia peach
in the fat heat of August.
My face still drips
with your juice; my hands
sticky as an ice cream cone
in the hands of a child
who does not know that time
exists.
God, like me
& your father,
is a fiendish
romantic, a comedic genius
falling all over ourselves
to get next to a chilly woman
who heats her burner
with a Memphis beat.

I don't mind your lying
as long as you're telling me your truth;
I don't mind the wind teaching a song
how to sing; I don't mind the distance
as long as you keep me near.
I open your secrets
with a carelessness
born of fever &
forgetfulness.

I touch all your places
that I remember. And
don't mind inventing
more lies
to fatten
in the sun.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

SUMMER

has always
reminded me
of summer--
from the first jolt
of blistering 90+
my voice rises,
gets higher;
Beethoven's 128
becomes 18, a funeral dirge
changes into Frankie Lymon,
nipples signify
not mom,
but hope,
mystery & night
are my double helix;
a tough tattoo
sings do-wop
just because
it can.
Where else should my fingers go
if not across the expanse
of a bra strap
fumbling with hooks
& fever; what's more
exciting than learning
how to smoke
& French kiss
with your older cousin?
You drop dime after dime
on new sides: The Miracles,
Shirelles or Drifters.
What is more miraculous
than a pool ball banked
or a basketball kissing backboards
or the one/three pocket in an alley?

And what is more impossible
than imagining yourself
here...
now...
suddenly weighted,
arrived at what was
once your forest
of motives,
your dark wood,
only to find
you're really
nowhere?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

BUS STOP BLUES

Sometimes
waiting for a bus
is enough
to send one
over the edge.
The sun hot
enough to fry
ovaries & gonads,
sweat pouring
into your underwear
as you watch
wheelchairs run over
walkers that topple
over legs splayed
over curbs holding
up the infirm the demented
the luckless, the loveless,
the broke dreamers,
the damned who only know
others just as damned.
And now
you know it,
too.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

TITS GALORE

They're proud,
they're pointy,
they're poised;
they bounce, they bump,
they undulate
like the air
on hot Georgia asphalt
on a long stretch of highway
in the dog days of August.
They flirt & tease,
they conjure
the boyhood spirits
of men.
They're in spandex,
latex, unisexed,
harnessed, haltered,
or loose
defying the whims
of gravity
& air pockets.

Some tits,
you couldn't find
with a compass,
while others
are a dairy factory.
All though
are lovely.
Lovely with the promise
of warm sweet syrup
spreading warmth
inside your belly.
Enough
to allow you
to close your eyes
and drift,
just drift.

And to think:
it's only June.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014