OLD MEN WITH FISH EYES

The Chinese shack is closing;
ageless men stack beaten wooden chairs--
4's & 6's & 8's
--on table tops.
The skinny cook,
a #2 pencil of a man,
dribbles ash
as his ducks & chickens rumble
over the blade.
A nick of blood pools
into the soy. How many fingers
make a dish?

A lean Grayhound idles
at the curb's edge.
It waits, tail pipes
leaking dreams and
impossibilites.
Plastic red bags
holding oranges &
midnigt transgressions.
A fat blond whore,
mascara covering her fallen lash,
leans into her ride
rife with determination,
uncovers an almond cookie
and bites into its core;
stale, the sonofabitch
fucked me, she thinks.
It is only the first
of many lies
in the first of many hours
she will have to endure
before the first of many truths
becomes clear on Monday:
the crap tables are unforgiving
for hot women
of limited
resources.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

USE WHAT YOU GOT; USE EVERY ITTY-BITTY THING GOD GAVE YOU OR THE DEVIL SOLD YOU; USE YOURSELF UP

1.

Use it like a gun
or a pocket mirror;
use it like a hairy fist,
or a set of fast thumbs.
Use it
as if your mother is hiding
inside you,
clocking your action,
judging, finger pointing,
wagging her stupid floppy tongue
cursing your infidelity.
Your memories
are simply oiled up
& begging to be caught.
Catch them.
Let the wind
drive them into your bones.
And let your bones rattle
and scatter in God's celestial crap-game.

2.

Make love to your disease--
if you're lucky enough to have one;
it pleases the gods
who thought it wise
to grant you a gift.
Embrace
its confines,
lick the edges
where, as all fugitive lovers know,
lies the sweetness of evanesence.
Your disease
will make you a better liar,
a better fabulist,
a better spinner of tales;
in short, a better artist.

3.

Winter has leaned early
into your crib
and froze your sap.

4.

I am
an old bull elephant
in must...

5.

Since I was a young boy
the fears have come
with regularity; I hold
an empty can of Coke
in one hand
& a Lucky in the other.
Neurosis drips
over the side of the bed
& pools in the can
with the ashes.
They are all useless
except as instruments
like music.
I have sung
the sad meat of my bones
and now gnaw the gristle.

I'll take some hot sauce with that...
make it to go.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

A SATURDAY NIGHT HO-DOWN AT McLEAN'S

Lowell cslls me up,
invites me to this soiree
at this joint he's chilling at.
Tells me there's gonna be
two hot smart babes, Anne & Sylvia,
who can't wait to meet me.
Bring some of your stuff,
we're gonna read a little,
consume some flammable liquid,
and then--
God only knows.

Beautiful & brilliant they were.
Two chicks,
from the right side of the tracks
and the far side of chemistry
that ate pain like candy
made choosing impossible:
Daddy/Lady Lazarus
The Black Art/The Ambition Bird;
pleasures multiplying
with each turn of phrase;
a void opening
into the yawning mouth
of a womb-like cave.

I'm fucked now,
they're killin me,
I tell Lowell
before I split.
"Wait," he replies,
"I can always
get you a room."

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

STEAM HEAT

A serpent's hiss
in the pipes
of my old brownstone
in Greenwich Village
on a freezing February--
only it's November
& we are caught
with our pants down
around the ankles,
& our balls,
made of brass,
clangs against a stiff cold radiator.

But the sound is enough
to alert the blood
that soon
very soon
it will morph
into a St. Bernard
carrying a keg of brandy
around its big furry neck,
as the steel warms.

And that hiss
is enough to settle you,
locate you,
like a bag of dope in your pocket
right after you cop,
the sickness at bay,
& you lean back into it
knowing it won't take long
to be enveloped
in that cocoon of warmth,
made well,
flushing the zero
from your bones--
not as lovely
as opium vapors
perhaps,
but a drift
by any other means
is still
a drift
into the
ease. You light
a cigarette,
put on some Monk,
and wait.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

THE ALAMO

is now on 11th Street
& University Place,
in Greenwich Village.
I'm hunkered down
fending off
the onslaught.
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna
can go and fuck himself
before I surrendeer.
I've got a sure as shit
straight-shooting musket
and my friend, Jim,
a Bowie knife. And balls,
I got them.
And so does enough coon-skin hats
to shoot the gold
from the capped-teeth of every Mexican
with bad breath and worse hygiene.
I played worse odds;
I grew-up in Brooklyn,
Coney Isand; the arcade
had the faces of mom & dad
plastered like wanted signs
down an illegitimate birth canal.
I could use a shot
of red-eye and a priest
to make fun of.
Because nobody will be left
to tell the tale
and history might think
we were fearless
instead of the foul-breathed
interlopers we are.
Uncle Walt
fucked us all.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

A SORT OF PLEA

Doctor, I've lost
my connective tissue--
have you seen it?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019