A GENTLE SLIDE INTO A CONCRETE MIXER

For Jack M.

Scuffeed-up
with the blood
of the ones
who slid before us,
we bled into the eighth grade
on those endless summer days
of Brooklyn's Coney Island
playing punch ball
with those pink Spaldings
tight & hard
while wads of Bazooka Joe
splashed over our lips.
Our knees & shins bloodied
from pebbles embedded from a slide into second base--
an imaginary basepath
--in a gutter from Mermaid to Neptune
while The Drifters drifted
and those marvelous girls
with Cadillac bumber tits
& teased hair so high
you could see through it
waited for their man
to get his ass off second base
& home.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

I'M GETTING USED TO DYING

in increments;
how the very air
you breathe in,
ushers yourself
out. Understanding this
is not easy; yet accepting
and playing with it
is both foolish
but inescapeable.
Your first & only love,
the mirror,
has told you
to pack your shit.
Too late
comes change
to change
your mind.
If you're honest
you want more
though there's
nothing much more
left to do
and less than that
to do much with;
another wrinkle
of thought
crisscrosses
across your face
now chiseled as if sense
needs explanations.
My discoverers will learn
the meaning of zero.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

BLACK BELLS

singing
like any other religious body
swaying to a wind's rhythm,
hints at a cancer from God.
A jubilee we'll have
across the stones
of our divide.
How else to make sense
of the permanent nature
of hatred?
How else to dance
on the graves
of sullen Jews
going to market?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

FAMILY SUCKS

you in.
Try
as you might
to resist
the lure
already the hook
is stuck
between gums
and teeth
while you flop
and strain
against love's
balm
& pain.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

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

A SUNDAY SERMON FOR THE BROKE & BROKEN; FOR THOSE AT WAR

with themselves...
Like those
who seek the lash
and the balm;
who have never looked into a mirror
that was friendly;
who have the posture
of a question mark;
who have the timing
of a busted watch--
this is for you...

One can never second guess themselves
too much; there is no such thing
as being right; and answers,
if such a thing ever existed,
are overrated; you are never
where you should be,
only where you are;
faith is for people
who already have it.
(These are obvious truths, baby,
and as such just serve to confuse
an already blood drenched mind.)

Better to rise
with a chameleon's grace
and Houdini's gifts.
Better a silhouette
than a snapshot.
Let others find
your mistakes.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

SWEETENED BY LIES

memory fattens the spinal cord
where six plays with sixty
as if they were friends;
as if they could be anything more
than taunts down windy corridors
towards obsolescence.

It requires a backbone
dipped in brine
to make clean the letters
caught between teeth;
who knew the greed of infants
would swirl now around
a wizened & gristled mouth
with the stump of a sentence
caught in the throat
as I try to announce,
loudly, on the birth
of my ways.

It is here
in the cave
of cravings
where you hear
a nurse mention
cures, but this
is no time
to test theories.
You will have to do
whatever is available
for now, advancing
in the dark
toward desire. Hurt
is part of it, as is
the buzz of flies.
You do not smell
beginnings here,
only a charnel house
of a life
yet to be lived.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020