THE VIEW AT 72

For my brother, Bobby: ...as a result of an afternoon conversation, 10/23, where we tripped down the road to Hell, but found a marriage made in heaven...A random fragment of that conversation.

It feels like shit, I said,
if you wanna know the truth:
legs, shot;
lungs, shot;
heart, stoppard by pinpricks of lunacy;
dick, marcescent, safe
as a steel condom
molded to the shaft,
weighing heavy
in the mocking mirror's grotesquery;
a bunghole corked, a runway
stacked-up with cancelled flights
of fancy...my brain, though,
and I'll be a sonofabitch,
still revs past the red line.

What else do you wanna know?

Those?
Those are paint chip stalacites;
when I'm working, getting this shit down,
they threaten to behead me,
forcing that ground control asshole
to get the flights out
before this soul crushing ennui
denies my reprieve: fucking
with words.
Because that, my brother,
has been the one thing that works,
that still works,
against the honest vows
spawned from bullshit & bravado.
They've allowed me to look
for angles, for impossible
bank-shots; to see behind
dead ends & rear ends & time bends
& warped trends; they've allowed me to wait
behind lies for easy preys
and rare sightings; they've made sense
of nonsense. They've given me shelter,
a vacation from life, if you will,
from solitary--
And all I had to do
Was wait...and bite
into a Lucky Strike
between pursed lips
for the next good word,
for the next good line.

Simple
ain't it?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

OUT OF IT

You need a day
like I had today:
fucked-up
and feelin fine;
free from my history
and those dark voices
that whisper & tongue
your inner ear.

Not a wink of sleep
and a few extra pills
for all the pain
real & imagined,
ingrained in a cycle
of anticipation,
did the job
of snatching from the jaws
of gods and demons
billows & breath
as a fog disappeared
into the earth.

There is that space
that waits for you.
Listen for it.
Trust it.
It is the only place
they can't take from you--
and they never could.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019