COMING

into that last hour
of the week,
rounding third,
heading for home,
is a beautiful thing.
You've made it
thru another week
of danger
to yourself
& others.
You haven't gotten killed
or killed the others
that you wanted to;
you've accomplished shit--
good & bad
--without wounding
or getting wounded.
Life has taught
you nothing
except
survival
& that,
my friends,
is triumph
enough.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

SAVING LIVES

in the Bronx--
the drug addicted,
mind addled,
soup labeled,
helpless hapless hopeless
& restless,
the bottle babies
of inflammable juice,
the deluded,
the schized,
the solipsistic,
the sycophants
paranoid jeepsters
& romantics
trilled, tripping
& tripped-up,
the deranged
& derogatory
mise-en-scene misers
or porno prosthetics...
---and those are
the run-of-the-mill
crippled from birth
& channeled
by betrayals
great & small, but
are not beyond
my reach.

There are those,
though,
who are
beyond me:
a woman who gave
a placenta soaked
all the news that's fit to print
paper to a lady going to work
with her two premature twins lying
above the fold;
or a man who watched
his dad & mom,
hand in hand
go back into their home
that his dad had taken
a match to;
or a man thinking
his teeth are ice cubes.

There are no courses
to teach this; it is
a university difficult
to get into, but
once accepted
even fewer
who graduate.
It's not something
you aspire to
in all its
permutations.
But once enrolled
you must take
every and any elective
that life serves up. You can say
it's a calling
where you're always dialing
the wrong number;
it's a blizzard
in a hot house;
an ant
with diabetes
wearing
an insulin pump.
You've survived
without knowing
how or why.
You've made it
an art.
And now it pays
the rent
as it saves
your life
as well.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

LETTING THE GAME

come to you
is something I do
more and more
these days.
I've put in
the work.
The poem seems
to assert itself
without self-
mutilation
or too much
affect.
I've become
an old fuck
that a few
young women
want to fuck
around with.
They're beautiful
& smart & do not
take me
too seriously
though they enjoy
my stories, my rants,
and my cynicism
which make them laugh.
I am the bone
of a Brontosaurus
they toss around.
They don't mind
my half
a hard-on
half the time,
& a slowness
of foot.
They've accompanied me
to doctors & have made me
dinner. It is more
than enough.
The few I'm still close with
understand that parents
& teachers, religious leaders
& politicians do nothing
except destroy; that pain
is endless
& love hides
in all the obvious places
if one is willing to read
the cards.

It's taken me
quite awhile
to learn
the simplest
of things:
money is piss
and the sparrow
immortal.
Courage
is more important
for our most frightened
and fucked-over;
and getting across freeways
blindfolded without a scratch
is more than just
dumb luck.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014