A DATE WITH THE EXECUTIONER

The Betty Poems

Two days
after Christmas
I'm going to die:
my baby's
coming in.
She'll wing her way
to me
on a prayer
and a cross.
I'll suffer,
I know,
for her sins
and mine.

She has little interest,
she told me,
in waiting
for Godot,
or any others;
she has no patience
for Tchaikovsky's
romanticism or
suffering; she has grown-up
inside her own skin
and that has been enough
for ten lifetimes.

We'll have a grand time,
she said,
pleasuring each other
with our humor
and our fingers
and our silence.
She wants
her wheels
to come off
for a few days
without thinking
about thinking,
without having to do
a goddamn thing.

It just seems right
when love is not more
or less
than what love is:
a prism
that reflects
your own colors
and colors
what you reflect.
And you become content
to allow that love
to kill you.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

THANKS---GIVING

The Betty Poems

My girl
is up high;
my balls sag
around my ankles--
bugs can play
ping-pong with em
for all the good
they're doin me
now, although
my boss loves
to squeeze em
too; he's known
for that: more sadistic
as our pain threshold
increases. Things
have just worked out
that way.
What should have been
gone through
early
has been saved
for later
waiting
patiently
while I dreamt
of escapes
and believed
I fooled em.

Still,
I would not trade
those murdered hours
for a punch card,
would not sacrifice
a martyred minute
for placemats,
silverware,
drapes or
throw pillows.
I know how stupid
that sounds, how
unreasonable,
and how it strips
self-pity from the bone.
But I've never desired
to fuck a Puritan;
never was attracted to bonnets,
and manners, and God
knows what else
inside the layers
of lace.
I've never known honesty
except my own kind,
skewered, I know,
made up, I admit,
second by second
in a loving embrace
with those less mad
or a touch madder.
Perhaps,
I simply
could do
nothing
else
given
the starting
gate?

Yet,
it all led
to the girl
up high
north
of the border
and whether
I will still
be grateful
next year around
this time
is not
for me to know. But
I do say thanks
to her now
for giving me
a reason
to say
thanks
today.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

JFK & ME

Coming up:
50th anniversary
of when the bullet
met the brain
of our beautiful
leader of
the free world.
America's machine
is milking it
for all it's worth.
Pundits and pimps
of posters and porn
are filling every
available orifice.
If you don't serve
their purposes
by knowing exactly
where you were
and how many tears
you shed
you feel like shit.
In fact,
you are shit
if you weren't frozen
with astonishment,
then grief,
when our handsome,
skirt chasing,
drug taking,
Camelot bullshitting
President was smoked.
Folks like Tom Brokaw
make a fortune
from our collective grief:
Where were you?
Were you in the middle
of farting?
taking a leak?
reading Hobbes?
or watching
a pair of nylons
disappear around
a corner?

Well, I know where
I was--
if any sonofabitch cares?
I was in Tommy's mother's Cadillac
outside Nathan's
eating a hotdog
trying to take a peak
down Tommy's mother's cleavage,
inhaling her perfume
while hoping
against hope
that I'd bowl well
in my high school's bowling match
she was driving us to.
The radio was on
to the news bulletins.
The Heart told her
to find some music.
She was all
for that.

I threw a 223, 227,
and a 204. I had
a very good
day.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

TELLING LIES

might have Conrad's
taint of death
in them
but has his civilization's rivets
as well.
The lies
are repetitive,
well constructed,
and serves as a glue
that binds us
to each societies
bullshit. The lies
we tell ourselves
and others
keep that civilization
and other presences
at bay.
There are lies of convenience
and lies of distance;
they justify war
and cool infidelities;
they grease the social wheel
and soften the maw of consumerism.
But mainly,
they just get
us by,
day to day,
hour to hour,
minute to minute
of our self-debasement
and diminishment.
They allow us time
for our own delusion
and distraction.
They can give us space
when another human
presses up
and against
us.

It's like loving a woman
but keeping hole cards
that remain hidden.
And even though
they too will become
naked, it's nice
to once and awhile
feel safe
and know
you needn't fill
an inside straight--
your pocket aces
will do.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

DUST IT OFF, TAKE IT OUT

For Annie

Annie sez
I eat pussy
better than
any woman
she's ever been with...

Fuck getting
The Nobel.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

MY SECULAR BODY

has caught up
to my manias:
"Fuck you,"
my legs say;
"Try breathing
now," my lungs
stutter; "Pump this,"
my pump mutters
through the sludge
while grabbing
his crotch.
When I take a piss
I bring reading material
to pass the time
as well as the water
and get bemused
by the white flag
of surrender hanging
off the tip.
But even this
is O.K.
by me: This poem
has given
me a laugh
on a very
grim day.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

ONE FOR LOU

I used to run
with a black
bald headed
dope fiend
name of Raymond
up to Harlem
in the sixties
to cop.
We liked to score
in The Sahara Lounge
on 128 and Lenox.
The big buck
at the door
never thought
we were cops:
we looked
too hungry.
They still sold
fat deuces
and treys
in there
which
could get
both of us
off.
The city
was the city
back then;
the dirt
still had
the turn
of the century
in it
and all the mixed
mixtures living
asshole to elbow.

The police
and dicks
knew we weren't
up there for cheap
sex and some
would eye us
as we made it
to 1,2,5
and out.
Raymond had stashed
works all over
Manhattan: the hospital
where he worked, rooftops
near his work, and on
the steps leading up
to his roof where he lived
with his ol' lady
and a kid.
Me,
being the good diabetic
had works on me
and a card:
Diabetic Uses Insulin.
Of course,
that left out
the eye dropper
which I preferred.

We usually
had luck
or stupidity
on our side.
And we had
two good women
who threw us out
on our ass
when they realized
they couldn't compete
against the dead.

Those were
different times.
The game
has changed.
Even being a junkie
is part of the square culture
and Times Square
is a Minnesota mall
and uptown
is downtown
for the upwardly mobile.

Gonna miss ya.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013