I've lived a life of madness and mayhem. I’ve had diabetes for 50 years and have been addicted to one substance of another for 45 of those years. It has been a beautifully joyful and painful schizophrenic ride: drugs, booze, women, music, writing, and learning with each new success or defeat. This blog tries to come to grips with all of life's fractures and contains everything--even you.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
WORK WEARY
Tried to play
spin-the-bottle
with my dick--
I got
nowhere.
What a drag
that was.
Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014
Sunday, January 5, 2014
THANK THE GODS
The Betty Poems
for knowing more
than us.
Had they given us
more money
or less sense;
had we less
desperation,
a smidgen less
hunger; had sex
not meant
escape;
had imperatives
not been handcuffed
to illness
and age;
had not a "fuck-you"
attitude tethered
to childhood disease
and family crucifixion;
had we treated ourselves
kinder with love
given from love;
had we been born
right handed
or left brained;
had the grass
not been greener
on the other side;
had the horses
not been swifter
under other's saddles;
had the fears
we nurtured
shared instead of coveted;
had the bodies
we abhorred
and refused to live in
been as beautiful
as our brains
which we did
and prized well beyond
their worth;
had we lived nearer
to each other
and able to walk
around the block
and into what
we thought
was heaven
it would have been hell.
One of us
would have called the cops
or an ambulance;
we would have killed
each other
and ourselves
because we had to.
Instead,
the gods,
for whatever reason,
pulled
the right strings
for the right puppets;
they made us dance
and gave themselves
a laugh and gave us:
"this." "This"
which cannot be named;
"this" which summons
more of "this."
"This" indestructible
and endless "this."
"This" is "that"
which we gave
each other.
"This" is a poem
to you. "That"
is you reading
it.
And that
is enough
thank
the gods.
Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014
for knowing more
than us.
Had they given us
more money
or less sense;
had we less
desperation,
a smidgen less
hunger; had sex
not meant
escape;
had imperatives
not been handcuffed
to illness
and age;
had not a "fuck-you"
attitude tethered
to childhood disease
and family crucifixion;
had we treated ourselves
kinder with love
given from love;
had we been born
right handed
or left brained;
had the grass
not been greener
on the other side;
had the horses
not been swifter
under other's saddles;
had the fears
we nurtured
shared instead of coveted;
had the bodies
we abhorred
and refused to live in
been as beautiful
as our brains
which we did
and prized well beyond
their worth;
had we lived nearer
to each other
and able to walk
around the block
and into what
we thought
was heaven
it would have been hell.
One of us
would have called the cops
or an ambulance;
we would have killed
each other
and ourselves
because we had to.
Instead,
the gods,
for whatever reason,
pulled
the right strings
for the right puppets;
they made us dance
and gave themselves
a laugh and gave us:
"this." "This"
which cannot be named;
"this" which summons
more of "this."
"This" indestructible
and endless "this."
"This" is "that"
which we gave
each other.
"This" is a poem
to you. "That"
is you reading
it.
And that
is enough
thank
the gods.
Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014
ALWAYS REMEMBER:
God, too,
was insane.
To think
us humans
could get
by
on what He
gave us...
Shit,
that's rich.
Pass the salt,
willya?
Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013