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

ONCE THE TRAIN HAS LEFT THE STATION

you're fucked
or liberated,
sometimes both;
having little choice
but to ride that sonofabitch
'til the next stop.
But once your body calms
to that existential delemma
a voice
is able
to snake through
the clickity-clack,
the grinding metal-on-metal lullaby,
the hip-hoppers & be-boppers,
wails of the crazed or soon to be,
and it's your voice,
faint as it may be
it's just loud enough
to elbow its way
to the front of your forehead
making you deaf to all other sounds
save this
and it's a memory
once distant, perhaps,
but now pulling on your mind's tit
like it's the only tit in town.
And you realize
just how parched you were
for this memory
just this memory
sour or sweet
matters less
than nothing.
All you know
is thirst.

And so you ride. You ride
with your mother's accusations
and your father's back of his hand;
or you ride with their warmth
and sensitivities to your needs;
you ride with the girl you have
or want to have; you ride
with your failures or conquests:
that brtoken-bat hit bottom of the ninth,
or buzzer-beater; you ride
with a slip of your tongue and a look
on the face of someone who loves you,
who would sooner harm themself,
with incredulity at your brazen cruelty
and of not realizing who you are sooner...
and then
the train
slows,
levers are pulled,
brakes hiss,
air emits,
& the next station announced,
but it's not your station;
in your heart of hearts
you really have no station;
and almost allow a laugh,
but that would smack too much
of melodrama, a cheap perfume
for the untalented, but still
there is time, you think, and so
you allow yourself to be teased,
to be jostled toward the door,
flirting with fucking with your mind's disorder
at the border between stops
but don't make it, instead finding
yourself a seat.

Then, without warning,
just as your ass is about
to meet the plastic cradle,
it leaves you, this memory,
but not before a wisp of its color
nestles in your flesh.
And there it will wait,
but not for long,
for others to join
on this pilgrimage
to the next stop
& the stop after
& the one after
that. And maybe,
just maybe
at the end
they'll be a rainbow
of memories
instead of the usual
flood of cul-de-sacs
awaiting the next
train ride
to somewhere
to do something
with someone
you have no memory
of now or
ever.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

A COLLAGE OF GATHERING PERFECTIONS

Just rain,
at first--
not cars,
not trucks,
not sirens,
and not people--
just the rain
trying to get through
to me
outside my windows
on a slate-gray
Friday afternoon
piercing this hot/humid tedium
of July torture.
Monk is added
discovering new ways
to ponder old riddles.
I'm newly showered
& shampooed; I scrubed
my confines
protecting flesh & spirit
& now integrated
my morphine base
with cashews & raisins--
a treat for the sweet & salty
in all of us.
I lean back
& light a Lucky.
My body-molded desk chair
conforms to my bends.
A warm glow enters
with an opiate's forgiveness.
It seems I have a third eye
in the middle of my forehead
as Sonny joins Thelonious
& "I Want To Be Happy" plays--
yes, I want to be happy, too.
And I am happy
& what next
is now.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

THE OLD SHELL GAME

I try to hide
the black queen
of consciousness
underneath distractions.
And so I switch
from MSNBC
to TCM,
from Max Von Sydow
to Brian Williams,
from an expensive custom fit suit
and elegant striped tie,
to the fundemental garb of knights,
a sword of defense & conquest at his hip.
Both of these searchers,
both of these truth tellers,
are weary
from the battle,
the constant onslaught
of plagues & pandemics
begun & christened by
presidents & kings addled
with power & paranoia.

Philosophers seek death--
that is their job.
They are paid a pittance
for their efforts.
Brian & Max are entertainers
paid to inquire about death,
but distract us & our death
in the offing. They
are very well paid
for seeking out God's hand
in the sky's excrement
we slosh around in.
What truth can be found
in this chessgame of extirpation.

I press the Spectrum clicker:
Brian asks reporters how to make sense
of our president's lies, deceits,
and calloused disregard for lives
left to lurch in the dark
for a toilet that was there a minute ago;
Max is Swedish, cooler, just moving his knight.
Brian probes, though he knows the dialogue;
Max attacks...or hides in the rough;
Brian juggles opinions; Max alights with doubts;
Brian must adhere to corportate time;
Max submits to Bergman's script & directions.
If it seemed weightier back then
it's not because of passion, each
being masters of their craft, but
the difference between black & white & color;
for home has always held less safety
then the queen would have you believe.

Still, I could opt out--
turn on Seinfeld
or Columbo or
a hundred other electric narcotics
the tube offers, a mere click away.
But they, too, have a beginning,
middle & end; they too
provide an easy lie. I know
this will end one day
only because I will end one day.
Someone else will be drowning
in this swill. Probably,
the waters will be murkier,
the air more fetid; a bag
of potato chips will be lighter
but cost the same; toilet paper
will be fatter but cost more
than the food for waste did; meat
will be caged, all fish farmed;
each will be xeroxed copies of each;
fruits & vegetables lab produced
to only look like their pictures.
And the big questions will be
no bigger than the small ones
and every one will be sure
where the queen is
and once again
they will be
taken, fleeced
and coming back
for more.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

DOPE THAT'S BEEN STEPPED ON, AND STEPPED ON...

Let those silly romantics yearn
for days long ago
when beds held a virginal bliss
of a love yet to be unspooled
and unspoiled
by our all too human delusion
of a life in its earliest embryo
of innocence & safety.

America, too, the idea of,
has been cut, stepped on,
so many times,
you barely feel it, now,
except to feel cheated.
Once, pure, perhaps,
in the tents of chiefs
and those with lust
in their hearts
for adventure
carved trails over mountains
rock-ribbed from shore
to praire to shore
carrying banjos singing
with disbelief
and daring--
now reduced to a mathematics
naked of forests & rivers,
indulging earth's moods
whether scorched or flooded,
holding aces & eights
inside capillaries of sin,
tricked-out on Saturday nights
fucking any floppy breasted
sacrificial whore in sight.

Instead I'll choose to remember
going uptown to discover
dope so good
it was sold in fat
deuces & tray bags,
cut so honest
it bordered on religion
allowing me
to come down
from the cross
and up to sit in God's palm
amidst his opium breath
and golden spun dreams.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

INDEPENDENCE DAY, 2020

The pre-ejaculate of July 4th
sits sourly in America's stomach.
So many celebrations spurned;
so many festivities silenced;
so many B-B-Q's rotting meat
in the backyards of illusions.

The renegade mask
hides no Will Smiths
riding in, despite odds
or reason, to cure
& save us.

Our "We're # 1" finger
is stuck up our own ass,
cavorting with the end
products of yours
& this culture's
madness. While Tonto,
granite faced & wise,
stops riding shotgun
& moves off to a land
not yet discovered.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

BETWEEN THE BRIDGES

"The only real defense civilized man has against anybody who bothers him is to lie."
"The Death Ship"
--B. Traven--

1.

I sat
lost;
excitement & dread
at each elbow;
yet each elbow seemed
to be welded together
without a joint; they bled
into each other.
It was like dying.
"New" was a precipice
I didn't like to walk.
It baffled me.
Others embraced change;
I cringed. Birth
was the riskiest thing I've done,
and if I had a choice, well...
And so, in a strange,
but painless agony
trying to suppress,
or protect, or eviscerate
the possible
from impossible, trying
to tease out where
I stopped
& life began
I slumped,
whole forests
on my shoulders,
in my seat
scuppered.

One bridge was a vapor
of dreams pouring a magnificence
born from concrete & steel
into the furnace of amalgamation;
the other workaday, down-to-earth,
but far from soulless were so close
they breathed on each other,
one with a practiced brutishness,
the other with a finery
of a politician's promise
and a puta's lures.

But I had weapons: I'd been born
into a Coney Island of near ghosts:
Steeple Chase's clown of con
& a grilled Nathan's frankfurter's pop.
Juices escaped. They trickled
down my mouth, sometimes draining
the sorrows stacked like taxed aircraft
beneath the head & heart, already old
for its years, seeing mostly
a wrenching finality.
I was drawn
(and quartered) while waiting
for a bell to move me along
into my next class of ambivalence.
It was the salted air
& fresh fry fish paean
in the seagull's beak
of Hopkin's God's minions
I sought to seek
that had me lumbering
toward Stillwell Ave--
the end, hence beginning
of the 20th Century Ltd;
a circadian cancer
and cure.

Past the window sills
spilling over with the flabby flesh
of old Italian grandmothers
wedded to the smell of red gravy
now on their outpost of death watch;
unfiltered & silent they stare
into every stranger's face while
illness, cradled by the wind,
snakes along the beach & up
through a rotten boardwalk's slats
until it boards the iron horses
at lands end; the terminal
is the beginning
of the edge where a sordid funhouse
insideously injects intent
without content, a needful ripening
of cataracts plump enough
to finally pluck.
I was ready, you see,
I was ready to be graced
by ladies of taste; and
I was ready
to be tasted
by as many as I could tastefully
work my way through
with wit, a dash of innocence,
a pouting lip, an inquisitive brow.
With each stop
I revised the script: Brando
on Kings Highway, Bogart
on Ave. U; Clift
if I thought Liz awaited,
Burton if she was late.
I had time for creation;
for even this ride
I was creating the ghost
of what I would become
and all the things I wasn't
the stop before
I'd make perfect
before the grinding of gears;
I had enough time
to make perfect
the imperfections
in fact, more
than enough
salt & sand
to sit back
and drift,
from what is
to where
one isn't
and where one isn't is,
as it always has been,
on an island
cannibalized by love,
is that island, and
that island
is called love.

2.

Just outside the gummed floor
& grime laced windows of the D train
walks Walt Whitman and his children,
hanging from his soft graybeard while
the green sap of literature,
runny with possibility,
turns a blueish white,
like veins do when age
raises the trestles;
often times you're tricked
by sight, thinking you see
where they go when they go
to tease and excite
your Helter-Skelter neurons
climbing to the top
of the slide
& grease it
wanting to taste the speed,
wanting to see just how fast
the ride could be when the locks
are unscrewed from the jambs when
even the jambs themselves are removed
from the doors...

If anything, I thought Allen himself
would be waiting for me
because he alone would know
how beautiful I was.
How human suffering
is not very different
than the horse being whipped,
or the bug being crushed.
How well Fyodor understood this
from his perch underneath
the floorboards as the merry-go-round horses
felt the lash, & wild-eyed,
took off to go round again.

3.

Our eyes
have become
sad lanterns
too capable,
still, at reading,
& inept, still,
at understanding.
Let us go, though,
on a journey most often
denied by a savage intellect
& weaned despite intent
or purpose.

Each year
a new
drowning;
each drowning
a fulfillment
of a scribe's logic:
inquisitiveness
requires courage,
and courage
is not
for the faint
of heart.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

A HOSPITAL HOLDS

Not only my bones
But also my spirit.
It actually argues
For my life
When the world
Wants to kick me
Out. I never thought
I could become so attached
To something so impersonal
But I have. The little more
I've become besides
Blood pressure & bowel movement's,
Blood sugars & restrictions,
Holds me & loves me
As close to humanity's breast
That life allows.
And while I admit
It's nowhere near
What I've always wished
To drown in, it will do--
It has to.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

MAY DAY, MAY DAY

I'm going down
with the ship--
I ain't got no choice.
It's the only ship
I got, and the fuckin Captain
is a fuckin moron
& the fucking crew
is just as fucking nuts
as he is or
is as fucked as I am.

Please, for the love of fucking God,
tell whoever the fuck loves me
I fuckin love them back
and I haven't fuckin forgotten
about the love,
not to mention the fuckin money,
I still owe them.
But whatareyagonnado--
I'm going up
or down
in fucking flames

& I ain't got a lot of fucking time
to write
no fucking love letter.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

COMING CLEAN

For Puma P. who midwifed this poem.

Stealing from a cancer patient
didn't take a lot of thought;
in fact,
it required no thinking:
here was the drug; and
here I was;
and I was alone
with all those morphine bottles
staring at me
and whispering:
take me, no,
take me, no,
what about me?
I took out my syringe-
an old glass & steel needle job--
& plunged it
into the heart
of the stopper.
She was an old woman,
ancient really,
her skin like yellowed papyrus,
gray tufts of hair
haphazard on her pillow.
Surely,
she was on her way
out.

Her nurse & her niece
(who was kind enough to bring me),
were in an outer room
discussing her care,
her end of life care, & here
I was just starting
my beginning of life care
in the year of our Lord, 1970,
a stone's throw from New Orleans,
in 100 degrees, 100% humidity summer,
& I needed to be cool,
to get straight, to buy myself
a few days to plan
for my future.
I'm sure, if I was able
to ask her, & if she was able
to respond, she'd be
more than happy to exchange
her comfort
for my safety.
No doubt she'd want
to buy me more time.

I still think
of that old lady
from time to time
looking down
from heaven
& seeing me
still busily
at work
turning out
poem after poem
after poem
knowing
what a wise investment
she made.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020For Puma P who mid-wifed this poem

MUSING ON THE BONES

of those who went
before me
to discover what
they make of these,
our uncertain times
finds me sniffing
around on ground
more suitable for balm
than banalities.
For all I know Socrates
would more lament
not getting a handjob
than gathering in the town square
to discuss death; Bird
would worry more
about his uptown connection
than playing at a filled Onyx Club;
Al Capone & Billy the Kid
had bigger problems
than hand sanitizers;
& Shakespeare would spend days
hung-up trying to rhyme coronavirus.

Those microscopic worms of malice
do not get fat on history; neither
do they care about sin
or saintliness. They enjoy
all our fares that still has a pulse.
They even lack the judgement
of the crematoriums which belched
Jewish ash into the faces of angels;
or the Poplar trees
where black bodies blew, to & fro,
in the malignant south.

No, I must search
closer to home
to uncover the stench
circling around the bare bulb
of etiology: ma & pa.
If anyone knows
how this migrant, unwanted,
unloved, repulsive visitor
vomited itself across
our country's magical mosaic
it would be them:
"It's your fault," they would say
in unison. "Somehow, someway,
you brought it on yourself...
& deserve to suffer now...And
you can take that to the bank--
if you can find one that's open."

And that, as they say,
is that.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

OP EN A LL N I G H T

Trying to find sleep
has kept me awake--funny
how these things work...
or don't.
I even tried to stop looking
thinking I'd outfox him; not
a chance.
I watched night after night
the furiously blinking
of colored neon
go off kilter & dance
the dance of St. Vitus.
And other times
I watched myself
and felt gut-punched
like seeing a Hopper painting.

I've believed misery & tragedy
will find you
no matter what you do.
Still, I've barricadded myself
in here for the past month
while that lustful virus
feasted on other hosts
less susceptible than I am.
I've got all the chronic conditions
that the little bugger could hope for.
Once inside, it would make short work of me.

You can learn
about yourself
at any age.
Recently, I'd boast
to all my doctors
& my few friends,
that I'd had a good life:
many scenes, many lovers,
many poems, high highs
& low lows--enough
to expect in this go round.
I was ready.
But now I feel the wisdom
of Auden in his, Musee Des Beaux Arts.
Old men cling passionately to life,
while unexpectedly the young go...
because I don't want to go
anywhere. I have more to read
& more to write. I want
another hot fudge sundae
and the smile of a woman
who sees something
I didn't think was showing.

And so I will watch
the little crack
underneath my door
or my windows
for any sign
of invasion.
I will not go easily;
I'll try to hide
behind the door
sneak up on it,
and knock that motherfucker
out.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

RUNNING AWAY FROM HOME

Every night
I would run away from home
as I tried to fall asleep.
I would hear
from the next bedroom
the mellifluous tones
of mom cooing to my dad
just what a sonofabitch bastard
I was
that day:
lying selfish sneaky; in short,
a piece of shit.
I think I was about eight
or nine...maybe ten.
She was encouraging him to
"give him a beating, Mick."
Whether I did something
or not didn't matter;
I was always doing something.
A feeling of guilt
would puddle around me,
& the blankets & bed
I slept under & on,
would drip, in the morning,
with neurosis
of many kinds
pooling around my feet.

Every night
the decision was easy:
Roy & Dale's ranch
was where I was headed;
they had a big spread,
a big heart,
& a big family; they kept
adopting kids: chinese kids,
spanish kids, white kids
& black kids, old kids,
& young kids; there musta been
a hundred of em
all livin & lovin each other
on that spread.
I'd just show-up
with all my stuff
in my hand
neatly in a small kerchief
& ask if they would let me stay.
I knew they'd never say, "no."
Not to a kid.

Everyday
I'd play.
I'd ride that awesome Palimino, Trigger,
play with Bullet & even help his cook, cook.
And then Pat would teach me Nellybelle, the Jeep,
& we'd go up & down hills & valleys and,
when she had a mind to, she'd run away from me, too.

In the morning
I looked at her
over my burnt & tasteless eggs.
"Eat it, or I'll tell your father," she sneered.
"Tell him, who gives a shit," I wanted to say.
But I knew, somewhere, far off,
they were mending fences,
bucking broncos, and laughing,
as I shoveled in
another bite.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020

TOMMY

had a white '65
Chevy SuperSport
with 4 on the floor
& red leather buckets
we'd tool around in
when we were seniors
in Lincoln High School
outside Coney Island.
Even the hawk eyes
of my mother
couldn't see
when I passed the bend
of our block. I ducked
into Tommy's house
a few blocks away.
He was rich
& lived in a big home
directly on the beach.
His father, Horseshit Harry,
owned steamships. Tommy had
two younger sisters
& a knockout mother, Josaphina,
who knew she drove his friends wild,
wearing diaphonous negligees
as she descended from above.
If the light
caught her right
the hair on the back of my neck
would prickle.
There'd usually be two or three
more friends who showed, but I
was always the first.
Our routine was almost automatic:
we'd say goodbye to Josaphina,
who always knowsingly eyed us,
& tumble into his ride, me
riding shotgun and began
by cutting our first few classes
at The House of Pancakes
in Brooklyn, off The Belt Parkway.
I'd bum Marlboros off Tommy
(and he never gave me that tired bullshit
about when I was gonna begin buying my own),
while he drove. He always had one of his own
clentched between his front teeth
beneath a black mole
the size of a small pumpkin.
Usually, The Heart--born with a murmur
--& The Count--looked like Bela Lugosi
were in the backseat
puffing away.
We'd talk shit
about everyone we knew--
who was fucking who,
who wanted to fuck who,
who bullshitted about fucking who--
as we drove & smoked & ate pancakes
and counted the minutes
until Dukes, the poolroom,
or Surf Lanes, the alley,
would open & another decision
needed to be made:
school or no school?
It was the easiest vote
ever cast, & legislated
without dissent.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020