GOING HOME

is a lot like death:
an instinct,
a drive;
it's where
the fever
started
and where
it broke;
it's those embers
that refuse
to go out.

As you return
from your weekend
with your genitals
intact think
of the carving knife
and the surgical precision
possessed by the hand
having Parkinson's
and thank
the gods
for the good luck
of making it
this far.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2011

ONE FOR PHILIP MARLOWE'S DADDY

Knowing you're great
does not mean
you're not great,
and it does not mean
you don't hate yourself
for believing it.
Being a fraud
is being an artist.
Truth lies
everywhere:
among the pleasures,
among the pains,
a mixture
of a maddening brew.
Nurse it
or guzzle--
it can never be
distilled.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2011

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF NOW

You don't think
you'll get through,
or make it,
or fade it,
or manage,
or survive
another minute
let alone hour,
but you do
somehow;
somehow
you squeeze
all the pain
all the sorrow
all the hurt
into the corner
of your eye
and groove
to the pain
of each
moment
each
exactly
pristine
rendering
of sorrow
of hopelessness
finding
a kernel
of pleasure
mixed
like vermouth
just waved over a martini
shaker showing itself
as if
by just appearing
it will somehow cut
the gin's kick.

The hours
and the days
and the years
bloody you
but provide
backbone;
a spine
against which
bones shatter
and dreams lodge.

The bad loves
are simply bad,
and the good loves
are only sometimes bad.
But to each
we turn toward
before we turn
away
or around;
each
have their moments
for and against
which the seasons struggle
to assert.

We only think
each moment impossible
to make the next moment
possible. It gives us
room
to flex
to stretch out
to hedge
and dodge
and plead
and promise
and hate
and accept.
It is the space
that death
does not
inhabit.
It is our space
inviolable
safe
the minute
between rounds.

You must have heart
to take heart,
take heart
to have heart
in the many bad times
and even the few good ones
as well.
To know
that we simply cannot acquire
too much
is the wisdom of the gods.
There is a kind of balance
that we are not privy to.
That is a good thing if
you listen
and look,
and look
again
and often.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2011

TRUST ME

on this:
you will be there,
too,
all too soon,
bemused,
altered,
confused:
the end
of those endless days
now has an end
in sight;
where you left your
time
as a big tip,
or laughingly thought
about how to "kill it,"
is gone,
camped out
on someone else's
doorstep.
Those good ol' Detroit orgasms
full of muscle
and horsepower
one day turned
into South Korean piffle
and soft steel.
An imperceptible erosion
of the you
you thought you were
and would
always be.

Do what you have to:
lie, rationalize,
use steroids,
pay
to be lied to,
sleep,
keep jogging,
eat healthy,
fuck the smokes,
the booze,
the powder,
get to bed
early
and alone,
rise early,
also alone,
vitamins,
wheat germ,
squat thrusts,
whatever,
and still,
it dribbles out,
without force
or much
meaning.

Trust me:
it's enough
to make you sick,
and,
if you've been lucky
enough, just
enough
to make you
smile.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2011

I DON'T KNOW MUCH BUT...

Two ugly men,
one white,
early sixties,
the other Chinese,
late forties,
walked
hand in hand
down Ninth Street
in Greenwich Village
earlier this evening.
They said
next to nothing
as a light rain
began to fall
on their fingers.

I don't know much
but I know love
moving
to its own
rhythm.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2011

ONE FOR SMOKIN' JOE

I'd just heard
on World News
that Smokin' Joe
had entered
hospice.
Liver cancer
had taken him
out.
How they go,
how they go,
all the ones you thought
would never go,
but they do. In this case
a rogue white cell
got to him; for others
it's simply old age
or natural decay,
For still others
a loss
of bravery
or spirit. Others feared
a drying up
of what made them
who they thought
they were
and took
an early
exit
like Ernie.
No matter,
how they bought it
it cost all of us
something--a diminishment
of a world
that has less and less
nourishment.
It is all TV now,
all scripted.
Fighters fight
once a year, maybe.
Poets are sucked
toward mics
& slams;
artists, auctions.
While junkies junk
and alchies drink
the sickness spreads
to precincts without
jurisdiction.

I saw Joe
up close once
in front of the old
Americana Hotel
on Seventh Ave.,
in the fifties.
He wore a full length
white mink coat and
a black felt pimp's hat
in a pimp neighborhood
before Disney
sanitized it
and made it safe
for fat Minnesota tourists.
I saw him fight live
four times, three
on closed circuit.
I rooted against him
the first three
and for him
at Nassau
when he fought Foreman.
He came out that last time
hooded
in white satin.
His head
had soaked
in brine,
as usual,
for half hour
before he dressed
for war.
He danced, he bounced,
he rolled his arms and shoulders,
took off his hood and shone
his stubbly head and face
to the crowd. Nobody knew
how much Ali had taken
out of him
until Foreman
marched across the apron
and hit him
once
and he slid back
as if he was sucked back
against the ring post.
Joe slithered
slowly
like brown cement
to the floor
and stayed
like that until
they came for him.

He tried to fight
a few more times.
And lost them all
badly. Even
the crooked doctors
would not sanction him
after those fiascos.
He opened a gym
in the poor slum
he came from
and slept near
the bags and the lineament
and the scars and the wins
and the cheers
and the women
and the men
and the jewelry
and the clothes
and the parasites
in a tiny room
plastered
with fight posters
in the back.

He said he hated Ali
but I don't think so.
The cruelty, yes;
the stupid humiliation
to sell seats, yes.
But not the fights, brother.
Not the fights.
To view them is a coward's sport,
a spectator's high.
But to be in them.
My God. To be in them,
round after round
and know
that nothing else existed
except death
is something that most of us,
unfortunately,
will live without,
never knowing
that kind
of bravery.

He was broke, of course.
But he had it once:
ate well, tipped well,
made love
to all manner
of creatures,
slept in beds
under silk
and perfumes,
and talked talked talked
to the shoeshine man
and presidents.
And that beats
not ever having it.
And so tonight,
I think of Smokin Joe,
and his last
few nights,
dining on morphine
instead of rare steak,
sipping tepid water,
through a bent straw
instead of champagne
in a flute,
I salute you
and those other heavyweight gods
who came before you
and the very few
who have yet
to arrive.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2011