BECAUSE THERE IS SO MUCH BEAUTY

that only torture brings out,
I've made sure
to have stockpiled
enough pain annuities
to last a lifetime.
My memory bank
welcomes the lash
& the leash
of new subscribers,
but should I see
a masochistic downturn
I simply tune in
to my favorite stations
and taste the blood
of a finely aged betrayal.

Johnny Keats
waxing poetic
on a Grecian Urn
shook the Brooklyn
off its perch
and into the steely crabgrass
where the hanging-judge
and the lotus-eater
hold court.

To all those
who've hurt or crippled me,
I cannot thank you enough.
To all those
who've fooled or betrayed me,
my hat is off to you;
you have lived far past
your expiration date,
but torture me still.
You've birthed this poem
and those which came before
and those which come after.
It's a signless road,
but well-traveled.
I can find it in the dark.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

EVIL IS DELICIOUS

From filching
a penny candy
when you were a kid,
to fucking
your best friends wife
yesterday morning
when you still had spirit,
the lure of being bad
surges like a jolt of adrenaline
into the fisheye of a bottom feeder.

From the furtive glance
into your classmate's answers,
to the minutely planned
afternoon bank heist,
to the first time
you copped heroin
on uptown blackened streets,
the steady drip
of transgression's nectar
prickles the heart
and pumps the testicles.

Evil has so many flavors
to slake the thirst
of a sandpaper tongue;
to satisfy the hunger
of a righteous bloated belly
pretending in their noble robes
or street urchins
lurching from a wooden cross.

These moves
& counter moves,
this crisscrossing
of God's wires,
mimicing the raven & the wolf
naturally fucking
a Grand Vision of deceit
funnels into view
all that makes life worth living:
renegades in love/a reckless art.
It turns desire
into mania;
it boils the blood
turning its watercolors of propriety
into a lustrous oil slick;
and its why I still covet
your cunt, your redolent cunt of gushing liquids,
into a glorious pool of sin,
a sin that welcomes
its sinner
& blesses
his arrival.

Norman Savage
Greensich Village, 2019

POETRY

like a worm
inching into the bird's beak
these years swallowed
& turned into an excrement
of words.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

SUNDAYS, A FAMILY DAY

were days
to lick
your week's wounds
while trying to avoid
repercusions (& concussions)
& trips to the family's farm
of home-grown kosher guilt.
It was a day littered
with traps
sprung from short-term memory
and long held grudges,
and the poisoned paranoia
of projection missles
launched into an already
scattered mind.

Sunday was a reminder
of not what you were,
but what you'd never become.

But away from the yapping
I would think of journeys
into the mouths of ideas;
each cavity, a tunnel;
each country or little town
held its own language
of pain as I dived
to meet where each exposed nerve
came from; where the roots
were rotten, where they shimmered
naked before my inexperienced eye.

Love was salted with fear;
empathy, a narcissitic fatality.
Seeking safety, I found a bed of lies,
which I was happy to cover myself in,
allowing the whispers to warm me
as I searched for an ending
that didn't feel so goddamn awful.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

THE LOVE SONG THAT IS HEROIN

is like a Billie & Lester duet...

is like sin caressing the anxious blood...

Her nipples sore
from her baby's greed.
She knew he'd grow
into his need
and take advantage
of every extended tit
and suckle until enough warmth
lined his belly...

My flesh
awaits yours;
my lips taste
your taste.
An old man
whose memories
are almost as dry as a twig
yet spill what little sap is left
into a feverish enterprise
of grief.
History's bastard,
a slow rendition
of want...

I know I'm a sucker
for pain,
and have a cavernous sweet tooth
for memory.
And what else is memory
if not a seductive trip
down a mine field
that always leads
to loss...

Now these old bones rattle
from a barren cold
and what else
beside the blast furnace
of a flower
that swells & drips its honey
into a spoon that swirls
the spillage of time
into a hot brew
that thaws & forgives the mind
while it coats & soothes
the stomach
will suffice?

Just leave me alone
& let me drift...
on a reed.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

SEX IS SUICIDE

if you happen to be male
and weigh less than a lightbulb
and a little red Kaluta
in the thrall of early September
when they rock 'n roll
on their search & destroy mission
with every Kalutaette as they can
for up to 14 hours at a time,
fucking their brains out
as they were known to say,
using sperm stored since summer's end
& depleting huge amounts of testosterone & corticosteroids
in their best imitation of Chinese rabbits
until their guts become ulcerated
& explode:
Cause of Death: Exhaustion.

But they died happy:
No after-sex phone calls,
No deciding on a name for the kids
& no need to support them or the ol' lady;
no in-laws to visit on Sunday
when traffic is the heaviest,
no listening to office betrayals
or how Nipsy or Bipsy or Tipsy
fucked up at school,
and no thought,
should things go south,
of alimony to shoulder--
just exhaustion,
that blissful after-sex sense
of oblivion, of coming
& going all
in the same stroke--something
most men
would die for.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

TWO NURSES, A TIGHT CLOSET, AND ME

positioned between them
the heat from their white purity
invading my pubescent hospital pajamas
flushing my cheeks
igniting my regions
as I Bobby Darined my way
through Mack the Knife.
1959 was the year,
diabetes the disease,
Brooklyn the place,
an all male hospital ward my home
of dreams, rock 'n roll,
& trouble
percolating like a virus gone wild
in a rapidly aging eleven year old body
finger snappin, pretending
I was both the singer
& the song.

After the fear
loosed its grip
& needles & shots & tubes
snaking from mouths & assholes & veins
to bottles hidden beneath beds
or crucified on poles
& strange & bearded men
lost their ghostliness,
my body regained its hum
and my little Panasonic its life.
She stood propped against the door,
in all her beauty, her starched white uniform
& pronged pointed hat atop her cornsilk hair
couldn't conceal a body wanting to explode
from its confinement, watching me
mouthing lyrics, snapping fingers,
and gyrating against the pillows
allowing Bobby's hipness to take me
to where I wasn't.
I couldn't have known
that everything we are
or was going to be
was held in a tune.

I caught her
watching & smiling
a smile that wasn't--
a smile meant for a lover,
a smile that wasn't cute
but coquettish; a smile
on a different highway
with a different destination.
She held her slim index finger
up in the air...soon she was back
with another nurse. Slowly
they came to my bedside
& she reached for my hand
& led me, on trembly legs
to a supply closet across the hall
where they pressed against me:
"Sing it again, baby," she coaxed me,
"just like before."
I began to stammer.
"It's OK, baby, sing it again,
just like before."
And just like that
I snapped my fingers, found the beat,
& the shark came out
to play.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019