TICKLE THOSE 88's

Happy Birthday, Toni.
And thank you.
Thank you
for locating
my heart,
corroded as it was
(& is),
& pumped it back to life
at moments that I thought
it was failing.
You've done it
& are doing it
for fifty years.

Have as grand a time
as I am having
cracking open
your newest work.
Much love, baby,
N.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

FUCK AND FUCKING WITH SEVENTY

When I was feeling-up Susie--
twirling her pink nipple
like a juggling fool
and inhaling
her adolescent powder or
gently chalking-up a pool cue,
or releasing a sixteen pound
black ball that rolled
down a slick alley and nestled
into the one/three pocket
turning five into five hundred,
or downshifting a Porsche
into a corner
doing fifty--
I hardly thought
about age or
infirmities,
those little gremlins
of egress and transgress
and impasse.

And now, suddenly,
here I am.
Most of the stuffing
come out
like an old pillow
and I still don't think
about what I can't do
but what I want to get done.

Tomorrow,
I will have been born
for the seventieth time.
And although more happened
during the first ten births
then my last sixty
(if what I hear is true),
and won't remember the final breath,
(if what I hear is true),
I have all the splendid mess
between. The gods
have been more than good to me,
they've been
generous...and
I want more.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017