Friday, September 11, 2020

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

Sunday, September 6, 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

Friday, September 4, 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