THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF NOW

You don't think
you'll get through,
or make it,
or fade it,
or manage,
or survive
another minute
let alone hour,
but you do
somehow;
somehow
you squeeze
all the pain
all the sorrow
all the hurt
into the corner
of your eye
and groove
to the pain
of each
moment
each
exactly
pristine
rendering
of sorrow
of hopelessness
finding
a kernel
of pleasure
mixed
like vermouth
just waved over a martini
shaker showing itself
as if
by just appearing
it will somehow cut
the gin's kick.

The hours
and the days
and the years
bloody you
but provide
backbone;
a spine
against which
bones shatter
and dreams lodge.

The bad loves
are simply bad,
and the good loves
are only sometimes bad.
But to each
we turn toward
before we turn
away
or around;
each
have their moments
for and against
which the seasons struggle
to assert.

We only think
each moment impossible
to make the next moment
possible. It gives us
room
to flex
to stretch out
to hedge
and dodge
and plead
and promise
and hate
and accept.
It is the space
that death
does not
inhabit.
It is our space
inviolable
safe
the minute
between rounds.

You must have heart
to take heart,
take heart
to have heart
in the many bad times
and even the few good ones
as well.
To know
that we simply cannot acquire
too much
is the wisdom of the gods.
There is a kind of balance
that we are not privy to.
That is a good thing if
you listen
and look,
and look
again
and often.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2011

TRUST ME

on this:
you will be there,
too,
all too soon,
bemused,
altered,
confused:
the end
of those endless days
now has an end
in sight;
where you left your
time
as a big tip,
or laughingly thought
about how to "kill it,"
is gone,
camped out
on someone else's
doorstep.
Those good ol' Detroit orgasms
full of muscle
and horsepower
one day turned
into South Korean piffle
and soft steel.
An imperceptible erosion
of the you
you thought you were
and would
always be.

Do what you have to:
lie, rationalize,
use steroids,
pay
to be lied to,
sleep,
keep jogging,
eat healthy,
fuck the smokes,
the booze,
the powder,
get to bed
early
and alone,
rise early,
also alone,
vitamins,
wheat germ,
squat thrusts,
whatever,
and still,
it dribbles out,
without force
or much
meaning.

Trust me:
it's enough
to make you sick,
and,
if you've been lucky
enough, just
enough
to make you
smile.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2011

I DON'T KNOW MUCH BUT...

Two ugly men,
one white,
early sixties,
the other Chinese,
late forties,
walked
hand in hand
down Ninth Street
in Greenwich Village
earlier this evening.
They said
next to nothing
as a light rain
began to fall
on their fingers.

I don't know much
but I know love
moving
to its own
rhythm.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2011

ONE FOR SMOKIN' JOE

I'd just heard
on World News
that Smokin' Joe
had entered
hospice.
Liver cancer
had taken him
out.
How they go,
how they go,
all the ones you thought
would never go,
but they do. In this case
a rogue white cell
got to him; for others
it's simply old age
or natural decay,
For still others
a loss
of bravery
or spirit. Others feared
a drying up
of what made them
who they thought
they were
and took
an early
exit
like Ernie.
No matter,
how they bought it
it cost all of us
something--a diminishment
of a world
that has less and less
nourishment.
It is all TV now,
all scripted.
Fighters fight
once a year, maybe.
Poets are sucked
toward mics
& slams;
artists, auctions.
While junkies junk
and alchies drink
the sickness spreads
to precincts without
jurisdiction.

I saw Joe
up close once
in front of the old
Americana Hotel
on Seventh Ave.,
in the fifties.
He wore a full length
white mink coat and
a black felt pimp's hat
in a pimp neighborhood
before Disney
sanitized it
and made it safe
for fat Minnesota tourists.
I saw him fight live
four times, three
on closed circuit.
I rooted against him
the first three
and for him
at Nassau
when he fought Foreman.
He came out that last time
hooded
in white satin.
His head
had soaked
in brine,
as usual,
for half hour
before he dressed
for war.
He danced, he bounced,
he rolled his arms and shoulders,
took off his hood and shone
his stubbly head and face
to the crowd. Nobody knew
how much Ali had taken
out of him
until Foreman
marched across the apron
and hit him
once
and he slid back
as if he was sucked back
against the ring post.
Joe slithered
slowly
like brown cement
to the floor
and stayed
like that until
they came for him.

He tried to fight
a few more times.
And lost them all
badly. Even
the crooked doctors
would not sanction him
after those fiascos.
He opened a gym
in the poor slum
he came from
and slept near
the bags and the lineament
and the scars and the wins
and the cheers
and the women
and the men
and the jewelry
and the clothes
and the parasites
in a tiny room
plastered
with fight posters
in the back.

He said he hated Ali
but I don't think so.
The cruelty, yes;
the stupid humiliation
to sell seats, yes.
But not the fights, brother.
Not the fights.
To view them is a coward's sport,
a spectator's high.
But to be in them.
My God. To be in them,
round after round
and know
that nothing else existed
except death
is something that most of us,
unfortunately,
will live without,
never knowing
that kind
of bravery.

He was broke, of course.
But he had it once:
ate well, tipped well,
made love
to all manner
of creatures,
slept in beds
under silk
and perfumes,
and talked talked talked
to the shoeshine man
and presidents.
And that beats
not ever having it.
And so tonight,
I think of Smokin Joe,
and his last
few nights,
dining on morphine
instead of rare steak,
sipping tepid water,
through a bent straw
instead of champagne
in a flute,
I salute you
and those other heavyweight gods
who came before you
and the very few
who have yet
to arrive.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2011

I'VE PRETENDED

to be whole
when I was fractured;
pretended to heal
when I was stitched.
I was a poet
before I knew
what poetry was.
I seduced
myself;
I studied
what I wasn't.
I won
seventh games;
threw hard
like Sandy
and batted
like The Duke.
To each face
I became
a different face
and to each face
I listened
and I lied.
Survival
is a hard won
art. The ants
know this as do those
jailed inside
their own fences.
We do not need a day
set aside
to pretend.
I've bravely
injected the unknown
into my arm
and woke with women
crazier than me
and grew crazier
at the gods reprieve
and pretended
this somehow was preferable
to the other.

I have given little
and expected much
though you'd never
know it. Those insurrections
were played to a mirror
of a narrow landscape
in a land
that is uninhabited
by hearts,
just masks.
And this is the day of masks:
jester masks, king masks, queen masks,
slut masks, masks of bones, masks of gods,
masks of idiots, of animals, beasts, gremlins,
masks of love, of lust, of fealty and prohibitions.
I've pretended
I was me
all my life.
I can take today
off.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2011

I KNOW EVERYTHING

except how to live.

I know how to bank
a pool shot,
but can't save a dime;
I love women,
but can't live with one
and have always kept a reserve
should the one I was trying with
crap-out,
become bankrupt,
or, prematurely,
want to close
her account.

I can easily titrate
my insulin
to get my sugar fix
or heroin
to fix my soul
with the best of them;
I can navigate a black landscape
in pursuit of the former,
or charm physicians
if those skills diminish;
I can downshift
a Porsche
into most any elbow
at most any speed
while reading The Old Masters
after turning off the ignition.

I've turned a phrase
or a sentence
with some grace and style
and have left
more than my share of flesh
on the page.

I have an eye
for good boxers
and artists
of all divisions; I know
superficiality
through its depths
and can be moved
by longhairs
and crewcuts.

Yet money
and love
turn me
Houdini like
and I
disappear
and no book
no painting
no song
have I learned
and taken
to heart
prevents
it.

And still
I wonder
who
is that
holding
the pen?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2011

HAAGEN-DAZS IS THE ONLY PUSSY I LIKE TO LICK NOW

for Joey Skaggs

You don't have to worry
about freshness
or taste; it is youthful,
unlined, uncreased, unencumbered;
it's not etched
by experience
and so its face
does not snarl
or bite
from wounds inflicted
by those whose hands
and head and cock
had got there before
and staked claim.

The Dazs tells you nothing
about parents
and boyfriends
and ex-husbands
planted or not; there's no mention
of friends
who've betrayed them
or who ask
for more
than they give;
there are no jobs
and so no bosses
who grab at their ass
or their time
and stake claim to your time
by having you hear
their little betrayals after
a day of your own.
There's no risk
of syphilis, chlamydia,
yeast
or urinary infections;
no pounds
they have to shed;
nowhere they
have to be.
They do not care
what you've eaten
before you get to them,
nor what it is you're watching
as you wait
for them to soften
(or that you're already soft for that matter).

At my age
I do not care for arguments,
only to stay alive
a little while longer
to catch some more grace
from the gods. I still need
something
to soothe
and morphine and booze
demand too much
of my time
and money.

At one time
I was in love
with the chase,
the battle
of wits,
the jousting
in new mirrors
in strange bathrooms
where the souls
of women are hung
and displayed.
I loved the conquest
and sometimes love
that lasted as long
as two people
having compatible neurosis
would let it.

But now I like my love
measured
in pints
that are easily
replaceable.
If I got five bucks,
or ten,
and I usually do,
I can pull a pint or two
off the frozen shelf
and take it home with me.
I will not have to hear
about the day,
about the kids,
about the disappointments
or the disillusions.
And I will not have to hear
about all the things,
many things,
different things each day,
I'm not doing.
But could do.
If only
I cared--which I usually never did.
I just put them
in the freezer. And there
they'll wait
until my need becomes desire
and I'll strip them bare
and devour them
with a cultivated
style.

Older men
have their ways.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2011