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

I'VE BEEN ON A TRANE RUN

For sensual junkies of all stripes...

for about a week now.
Things like this seem to happen to me--
have a taste of Haagan Dazs tonight
& a week later my mug is still buried
in a gallon; read a Bukowski poem
& a month later you can find me
nailed & waving to him
from the next cross.
From birth
I've been a heat-seeking guided missle
of pleasure; tickle a part of my brain
& I climb aboard
without thinking
of schedule or
destination. Let the driver
or conductor worry
about that. Besides,
I reason, they're getting paid
to get me where I'm going; I'm
just along for the ride.

Sure,
sometimes the trip
has been bumpy--
unscheduled stops
for hospitals
& rehabs, a love affair
or two that had me
missing my stop or
missing an organ,
but how are you going to tell a cannibal
that the flesh he's hungered for
might be necrotic?
He'll just laugh
& eat around the edges.

Sixty-one years ago
some tasty black spoonfuls
conjured a be-bop magic
in the alchemy of a white chef's
basement in Hackensack, New Jersey.
Today, April 12, 2019,
I'm feasting
on their labors
of love.
The Trane
endures & tastes
wonderful.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

For all junkies of the senses...

ALL ABOARD

Memory is a motherfucker;
It can't be trusted.
Especially your memory.
Your memory was always
suspect. You know it
and I know it.
Still,
we get on board.
You never know,
do you,
where it's going
or how
it's gonna get there?
It always surprises you--
thinking you're taking the express
& discovering, after the doors close,
it's running on local tracks.
And it ain't being sung
by Curtis Mayfield or Al Green
or The Persuasions; in fact,
nothing's being sung
yet everything is heard
in this melodic atonal cacophony
above the grinding of the wheels.
It's an unreliable train
ferrying an unreliable narrator
whose perfect sense
is unimpeachable.
All those stops
stopped at
and stopped up
and stopped still:
I look for Milk Tit Avenue, but round
Daddy's Bend; try to lower my eyes at
Agony Way; try a detour to Women's Wonder Wheel,
but fall into Judy's Triangle;
jump off Heroin Cliff; get back at Hope Lookout,
and avoid Church Street completely
except in fact while Masturbation Circle
appears again and again but less and less
as the brakes grind down.

Luck
has played a part,
and an absent minded conductor
has not yet punched
my ticket.
Your trip, of course,
is different.
And the seat
next to me
is always
empty.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015