LOOKING FOR PREY

I've got one day
a week
to get out
of my lair
and into the jungle
to line up the prey
I'll devour
over the next six days.
In-between
is spent
working for the hole
I shit in.
I'm an animal
of the worst sort--
old, trapped,
but still needing
to go on.

It's gotten warm
on this savannah,
and so I sit
among all the fleeter creatures,
legs, knees and shoulders arthritic,
teeth are long and mostly gone,
heart, though quite diseased, resting
for the next quick pump, the next challenge.
I look at them all,
the female and male:
young ones, old ones, fat ones, thin ones,
ass' pert or like Montana mules,
I measure them,
gauge the distance;
only one out of a thousand
looks like it would make a good meal,
but the old beast must shop
at any store that's closest, must make do
with meat that's available,
no matter the cut and damn
the cost.

Most who pass
give me not a second thought;
they do not see the madness
in my eyes, or the hunger,
certainly not the desperation.
I've not gotten this old
by showing my cards,
only playing my hand.

A little girl decides to stop
and plop down
on the sidewalk near me;
her mother tries to yank her up
by an arm; her father looks on
seemingly helpless.
The little girl's face
is dirty, smudged with her last
snack. Her defiant blue eyes
find mine. We look at each other
locked in a fine standoff.
The girl's forefinger is stuck
so far up her nose
that barely her knuckle shows.
The mother looks at me,
and yanks harder.
She tells the father
to grab the other arm
which he does.
The little girl drags her feet
and looks over her shoulder
at me. Unfortunately,
I don't have another decade
to wait for her.
Excuse me,
a gentle voice said,
may I sit in this seat?
I swivel my head
right into the eyes
of an eighty-five year old.
By all means,
please, I reply.
I watch as she places
her three-pronged cane
into a space that allows her
to settle safely.
My mouth
waters.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2012

TAKE HEED, GENTLEMEN:

the dick
does not come
with a lifetime guarantee;
I know this
is hard,
if not impossible,
to believe
for the young
and the middle aged
when a random thought
or brushing against
the past
or the future
or the immediate
stiffened the rope
that elephants
could hang from.
It's sad
like crossing a threshold
you didn't even know existed
but you've passed;
you look behind
at the gulf
and it seems as tiny as an ant's asshole,
but it might as well be on Mars;
almost as noiseless
as the near dead,
the spigot rasps
and coughs
and dribbles
as you watch
it empty: youth,
your youth
has taken off
for greener pastures.
No longer
will you be able to
guide it in, or,
like an old sock,
soft from wear and washing,
stuff it up there knowing
it will find a resting place,
anyplace, like the corner of a drawer.
It will be
a mocking appendage
that informs you
of the time it was,
the time it is,
and why old men
are so quick
to wage war.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2012

ONCE

I was looked on
as dangerous.
Don't get too close,
they said,
he'll get you in trouble,
bring you down,
have his way
with you. And don't,
whatever you do,
they stressed,
fall in love with him;
he'll steal your money
or your heart
or both
even if he likes you.

Now, I'm just
a cautionary tale.

But that's O.K.
It was all
besides the point
anyway:
the ones who were pulled
with fever or guts
into my orbit
had their own gambler's dreams,
drew closer to me
and tumbled
as they sucked
whatever they wanted to suck
until they became dry
or exhausted or I became
too predictable
and boring;
the others
without those feelers
were never in danger
to begin with.

History is always something
yet to be lived
by each of us.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2012

ALPHABET SOUP

There were Ann', Anne', and Anna,
Amy', Barbara', and Core, a few Diane',
and more than a few Denise', Elizabeth
or Liz, Lizzie, or Betty,
Kat and Kitty;
there were too many Sue' and Suzie' to count,
and one memorable Suzanne; a barmaid Amber
in a strip joint on Sixth Ave and a rogue Arriana
who claimed to be a Russian Count's daughter
on the lam; a Ms. Nunez in Madrid and a Ms. Marquez
in a hospital room in the South Bronx;
a few Ruth', Maria',
Judi, Judy', Jo, and Jane'.
There was a Lorraine, a Lenore, a Danielle and Victoria,
Hettie and Maize.
Most of the others are lost
in a memory that is getting to be
a loosely strung sieve
although they come back
when least expected.
Most of them,
especially the lost ones,
were jousts
and nightly conquests;
nothing more
than a test
of my insecurities.
I was certainly
no bargain
the way I lied,
manipulated,
drank/drugged
talked bullshit
or humored my way
to the finish line.
Who, but an idiot,
keeps score?

Yet each name,
with time,
became baby or doll
or a special shortcut
to intimacy;
each visage,
became a snapshot--
some with captions.
Some, even, became
a wonderful poem,
funny, brutal, filled with life
and sometimes love
for days and weeks, months,
and a few time, years.
The ones that were the best
was when the heat of fucking ended
and an easy observation began:
I liked to watch them bathe
and dress without
male intrusion; the ease they have
with their bodies, the application
of notions and lotions and perfume
and hosiery. The loveliness of vanity
when only you are around.

I know I offered each of them
something, but what that was
is hard to know.
I do believe that none of them
were bored although
I've wasted some of their time--
a terrible price to pay, I know.
I'll probably be going to Hell,
if that's any consolation.
Some, I know,
I'll see there and maybe
take up with them again
and see what happens
next time.
Hell, maybe
I've gotten
smarter.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2012

METHADONE FOR LOVERS

I got it bad,
she said.
How bad?
I asked.
Real bad,
in my bones bad,
she replied.
What can I do?
I inquired.
You can treat me
just a shade short of mean...
come over,
like you used to,
fuck me when you want,
and leave;
tell me you'll call...
have me wait,
you know--
be yourself.
I don't know
if I can still do that,
I said.
Try,
she replied, just for a little while,
she continued, I really got it bad
from this last one,
bad, bad, bad;
he shoulda been named Columbus
for all that new found pain he discovered
inside me...and you?
you were bad,
but never that bad,
and I need a little tapering;
I need to ease off him
slowly.
How long do you think
this will take?
I asked. (I felt like a whore,
but a good one.)
Don't know,
she replied,
but I gotta get the taste
of him out my mouth--a month
or two
should do it,
but ya never know
with that kinda love;
that kind of love is tricky:
it tickles
while it hurts
in those places
where unknown pleasures hide,
ya know
what I mean?

How does seven sound?

Sounds like a plan,
she said.

I knew I wouldn't make it
until eight-thirty or nine.
I hung-up
gently
and grinned.
In all this time
I'd not forgotten
how.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2012

KILLING TIME

Rare is the person
who utilizes it;
and even rarer
is the person
who profits by it.
Usually,
we bludgeon it,
piss on it,
strangle it,
avoid it,
plunder it,
tear it, rip it,
shit on it,
spit on it,
sit on it,
eat it
up
when full or
for no good reason
at all.
We bruise it,
break it,
bloody it,
staining ourselves
and the cunt of the earth
that bore us.

At first, we thought
it was just a "filling in;"
a way of getting
from place to place
with something, anything,
to do. We humans need
filler to dam up
the madness
of emptiness
unlike the snails
and the slugs,
the whales and the bugs,
the flowers stretching
and trees widening
without knowing why.

Time was a different enemy then--
then it was something to be defeated--
until I ate, or got laid, or drunk, or high,
or something that changed who I was
or thought I was--
until something happened
that coated the misery
or the fear
or the monotony.
It was there
before the food was in front of me,
while the connection showed up,
before the picture show started,
or a job appeared.
I was bold then,
I thought I could fuck with it,
bend it,
meld it,
twist it,
tame it,
make it
do my bidding.
I was so smart,
such a rogue.
The drink helped,
the drugs helped,
the women,
young and old
helped. The writing helped
most of all. It gave me
hope and lessened
the terror. What they
gave me was the ability
to mug a minute or two;
to find the magic
in the flesh of a poem,
in a wet bottle
of beer or the depths
of a shot glass;
the surge of dope
inside your stomach
and heated shoulders and neck
licking the memories clean.
Those pockets of miracles
when a woman knows
your stupidities
and laughs at them, when her ankles lock
and brings you into the stretch
and you both ride
as if on fire allowing everything else
to burn.
I didn't realize then
how rare feeling alive
while not being part of this world was
and how patient time is;
how it held
all the cards; how that kind of obedience
can cost you days and weeks and months
and years. How one day
you look
and look
again, sucking in your tongue,
nodding your head, a bit bewildered, looking
for the lost years,
sometimes decades,
and if you're not careful
you think you can make
those decades up
killing more time.


But I can't kick:
I was a poor bet
to make it
much past forty,
growing up how I did,
with the diseases I have,
and being a heat seeking missile
of pleasure and self-destruction,
but I did.
I would boast about it--
as if I had something to do with it--
but not now;
now I know I was just an animal
either doing or being done.

The end for me will come sooner
rather than later
while I still look
for those minutes, those pockets.
Most of my time is still
mind numbing, frustrating,
even painful, yet I'm still lucky:
the music still plays
and the words still dance
now across a screen
instead of paper. They are tigers playing
with each other.
And me? I'm no heavyweight champ,
but I'm a good club fighter:
I'lI never lie down,
and more often than not,
no matter who the fuck I'm fighting,
go the distance and maybe,
just maybe, win;
and maybe win
more often than lose,
when the scorecards get tallied
after the last bell sounds.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2012

WORDS ARE SHIT, TOO

Basically,
you gotta let it
come out
all at once.
Later,
you clean it up
as best you can
to make sure
you don't stink
too much.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2012