HOLDING HANDS IN HIGH SCHOOL

After crossing
a canyon of fear
where small deaths
were lily pads
across the divide
& finding her fingers,
then hands, pulling me,
like liferopes of possibilities,
(and despite an erect & pulsating newness),
gave form & meaning to Curtis' Gypsy Woman.

Suddenly,
poetry made sense;
we were meant to be sung.
Old as we were being born
into a soiled & sordid world,
yet as unabashed as desire must be,
we read each other
in that mischevious look,
a smile worthy of Mona
and a leap into a trust
that defied your history
granting, finally, a childhood,
full of fancy & exploration
flushed with a kitten's curiousity
and a lion's hunger.

We bumped hips
making our way
from the stale
high school morning
into a new day
of frivolousness--
she in her jeans,
tight hot everything
and me in my coolness--
cutting those stupid classes
of dullness & dandruff,
trying to figure out
how I could be this lucky.

We had taken the chance to look
for that most elusive minute
in a corner of convenience--
whether in a four postered bed
overlooking the Atlantic,
or on a mildewed mattress
in an abandoned Coney Island tenement--
to discover each other
again and again and again
in an indifferent home
that was vacant that day
and welcomed our foolishness
and our courage
to enter.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

THERE WAS THIS GIRL

in high school
I lusted for.
It was not desire,
but need. But she
was tangled up
with a moron.
You can argue
against anything
except stupidity.

That next summer
things had changed:
her mom was fucking
a Communist neighbor
and she had abandoned Russian
for an Art major in college;
she knew what lies were
and how to create some
of her own; and I got smart
in the cosmology of drugs
and bullshit. She'd also quit
the moron and watched
how her body leaned in
to itself. Her eyes
were still cat's green.

We read Ramparts
& Ginsberg, sung Dylan
& Motown, smoked pot
& fucked whenever
& wherever we could
& survived some of the onslaught.
But not all of it;
she's dead forty-five years now
& I'm still going--not as strong
but still going. Our pain,
inviolate & absolute, created
a union having little to do
with love as we imagined love
to be, but each time I think of her
it's different--and that's
a real poem.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

THE SUN, THE SURF, THE SEA...& ME

I'm getting picked-up
in an hour
& being taken
to her home
on the island.
I've bought
an old man's bathing suit,
and I'll put my old man's body
inside and trudge through
the hot sand, oiled up,
uncomfortable, a bit lost,
a bit disorientated, on scarred legs,
thinning arms, balding head,
to sit in an unforgiving sun & play
a young man's game--
seducing & allowing
her to seduce.
It's like watching
that old kid's show:
Let's Pretend.
And thank the gods
the poet still does.

It's been easy with her
so far.
No inkling
of the whirlwind
destruction
of the last one.
She takes what is
& doesn't bother
with what isn't--
so far.
I'm still
jumpy,
but that, too,
will pass--
maybe,
if what I see
is,
& what I don't see
isn't.

That's the best
I can do--
right now.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014

BEING IN LOVE IS FUCKED-UP

The Betty Poems

more so at sixty-five
than at fifteen,
especially when it's
your first time
really feeling
that sort
of craziness.
It shouldn't happen,
you say,
to yourself;
those molecules
that did a St. Vitas dance
should have long ago
rested their weary legs;
those adolescent agonies
should have given way
to a complicity
with the bodies
betrayal
and the beckoning
of the grave.

But no.

Your paranoia
does pirouettes
in your brain:
where is she,
who's she with,
who's she fucking.
Your heart
is halved
by her absence.
Your soul
scratches
against the nothing
inside it and
the nothing
outside.
And all the while
you're exhilarated,
and off balance;
you're a compendium of want
textured by grief
and longing; a language
you haven't heard
and can't learn
because all the books
that taught it
have been burned
and there's no more
pulp except
inside your three remaining
teeth and your dentist
wants to fuck her
too.

This is serious
if I want to stay alive.
I cannot concentrate
on much of anything
except her. I'm sure
she knows that
and turns the screws.
The pain
is pleasurable. She knows
that too.
Fuck her.
Fuck me.
And
while we're at it:
Fuck you, too.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013