VODKA

Don'tcha love
potato farmers?
Tilt up
the glass
& taste
Fyodor's blood,
Mayakovsky's phlegm,
the drip
of Turgenev,
the mad laugh
of Gogol,
the fever & grace
of Baryshnikov,
Vygotsky's reach...
The liquid breath
is clean
anger
only clouded
by rants
of those possessed
by a holy negation;
too holy
to be written,
too sacred
for screed,
balancing a universe
drunk
on its axis
& lonely
for its
children.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

THE YEAR CHANGES, BUT THE UNDERWEAR REMAINS THE SAME

For Puma, with love...


Men still follow
behind women
quietly
as they are led
into supermarkets,
clothing stores,
restaurants,
movie theaters,
looking aimlessly about
as they submit
to the leash,
if not the lash,
of the female
& lean
into their own
confusion.

Jesus, too,
must have noticed
the Jaws of Death
when he followed
that old whore
to her corner
and watched her
throw-out her line
& began to fish
for her daily bread.
He looked about
trying to believe
he was concentrating
on something divine
but knowing it was
rejection
that had him coming
back for more.

Too often
I find myself
reading ingredients
on the backs of cans
while the woman I'm with
moves forward
with our lives.
I've been lucky
having always someone
who knows
how to dance.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 201

A PETRI DISH OF MURMURED MADNESS

Eye
droppers
& dollar collars.
Rubber
nipples.
Book matches
twined
& humping
each to each.
Spikes
dull
rusty
blood caked,
but O
so necessary.
Black carbon
underbellies
of spoons.
White ladies.
Dope sick.
A warm November
evening, '69.

Let's dance.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

WHAT WOULD BE THE CRIME

if you loved me?
What would you lose
if you lost yourself?
What would you give up
if you gave up
defending against
your ghosts?

I, too,
am a loner
who craves
a lover
when I want; I, too,
am a howling maw
of misery
& trouble; I, too,
am skilled
at the art
& pleasures
of self-flagellation.

One day
we'll meet
on a border
of heaven & hell
& skip
between the two.
We'll have plenty
to laugh about--
our stinginess
with ourselves
being just one
of our follies.
Maybe the next time
we die we will
have really listened
to Hank
and choose to allow
what we love
to kill us.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

PEEPING

the peeper
who peeps
the peeper
who peeps.

Fear not,
my love.
If I do not love
you, I do not love
at all and when
you stop
for a minute
or stop
at your grave
I will not
be loved
again.

Can you see me
getting dressed?
I'm going out
this midnight.
In this cold
February
of grief.
There is a ball
for exhibitionists.
My fingers
are all
I need
to warm
me--
though
your eyes
are essential
for this dance
to be danced, too.
Observe me
observing you
in your private
hell of dancing
lies, dancing
that delicious
Fascist rag.

Its perversion
is its passion.
Nothing more
than being
scared
shitless--
the beginning
of lust.

And isn't that
beautiful, too?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015