SOME POEMS

come out
fully formed
like a good shit
that leaves
your asshole
clean
and just drops
without a mess
to clean-up.
I like that.
It's like having kids
and not have to raise
the motherfuckers.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

BEAUTY

is like genius:
most everyone has it
when young;
but show it to me
when fifty--
now you're sayin somethin.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

THE POOR GIRL

The Betty Poems

has a digestion problem.
It does not matter
that she is brilliant
and beautiful. No matter
how much
it's never enough.
Pain
is the only
by-product
that gets
absorbed.
She sits,
spitting out
or puking-up
happiness
in whatever
she swallows--even,
or especially,
me.

And the only doctor
she will admit
to help her
is male.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

MORE THAN MY FAIR SHARE

I know what it's like
staying on a crap table
for more than thirty minutes
making pass after pass
after pass; or getting laid
in a whorehouse
with no money; pissing more
than most people drank; or feeling
the purple fear of powerlessness
alone, as a blood red sun set
or rose on invented days
as the tin foil ways of my life
shook the glinting sun
into the corners of a brain
that no longer worked
or really wanted to.

I know what it's like
winning games
by half points,
and losing some
as well; or getting beat
by a twelve year old
drug dealer
in some south Bronx shit hole.
I know what it's like
eating for free at Le Cirque,
The Four Seasons; sipping
on three hundred dollar bottles
of red wine or white wine
from Oregon and France
while cracking open shell fish
from the cold waters of Maine
with the owners
at the owner's table
in the kitchen
with the chef.

I know what it's like
to talk wise
to the makers of fine leather shoes
from Italy and
the shoeshine men
on 42nd Street; to enjoy
two boys going at it
for fifteen rounds
and fucking whatever whore
was on my arm
that evening, the springs
being as hot and bloodied
as the ring.

I know what it's like
to have love
but never loved
back--not in ways
that went beyond
the act. And had thought
I was beyond that,
incapable of making those
contritions, leaving me alone
but peaceful. Coming
from where I did
it all made sense.
But then you came,
jimmied my door,
forced your way
in, lifted me
by my neck and shoulders
shook me out
of my wet and rumpled clothes
and fucked me silly.
I surrendered
without much
of a fight.
For the first time
I knew what expectation meant,
what senses were designed for,
why a heart was made to beat,
why brains functioned better
confused and heated. I knew why
I had to breathe.
What I did not know
is how love lies
without meaning to;
how each body moves
in its own orbit
and sometimes that orbit
is repelled by the sun.
And now I know
absence born
by desire
but that is fine
with me. At least
I now know what it's like
to have had it once
the way the poets
had it; the way fools
have it; the way children
have it. And that will have to do--
it has to--
for now.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

NO PROBLEM, BABY

The Betty Poems


I've been killing myself
for over half a century
with cigarettes--first Lucky Strike
because I was such a tough
motherfucker, and later
Marlboro after my lungs went
all insurrection on my ass.
I've enjoyed
every fucking drag
and the way those skinny tubular
merchants of pleasure
slid so easily,
like an inlaid pool cue
between my varnished index
and middle fingers.
They nursed me;
they comforted me;
they nourished me
when no other human could
or wanted to
through amputations,
a quadruple,
extractions,
laser eye bombardments,
talk therapy,
encounter groups,
more talk therapy,
dope addiction,
booze binges,
break ups make ups
isolation so monstrous
it made rats weep.
Despite admonitions
from doctors
and dealers
who prophesied
stumps for legs,
and tubes for air.
Past fog horns
moaning for its lost
sailors and past captains
diving into their wrecks.
Past men of the cloth
who knew only morbidities
of the spirit--
Past all
and nothing
I stood fast
and loyal...

Until you...

coming from the north,
from a gentler country
you were no less ruthless
and violent
and vicious
to yourself
and so knew me
well enough to know
that borders were cages
that brokered limits
and limits were cages
that brokered fears.
And after you curled
inside of me
listening to the agony
of breath, a pleading
inarticulateness you said,
Savage
(a more beautiful whisper
I've never heard),
you must,
we must stop
smoking so we can buy
(if it can be bought?)
more time
together.
No problem, baby
I replied.

Today
makes it a week.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

I WANT TO THANK YOU

The Betty Poems

for putting a spark
into a part of my heart
I'd thought long ago
extinguished...

But it never did ignite.

Another
will be the recipient
of the flame
which she knew
how to fan
and I
had no choice
but to allow her to.

It is not fair,
I know,
and little comfort,
even cruel
to read.

Sometimes
being a good writer
is a poor excuse
for being a prick
of a human being.

Norman Savage,
Greenwich Village, 2013

NOT MY TYPICAL SATURDAY

The Betty Poems


I am
a creature of habit
usually: up early
with a hearty, oh shit,
to start the day:
brush teeth,
put up coffee,
shower,
coffee--a sip, a cigarette--
read the papers,
another coffee,
another cigarette,
then another of both,
get dressed,
gather the weeks dirt:
work, frustration, a little less
hope and throw them
all in a laundry bag
to take them downstairs
where they will be washed
by America's new class
of exploitation and shaky
documentation.
It's just about 12:00,
high noon. And like Gary Cooper
I just walk
across the street
to a showdown
with the bad guys,
the killers,
only, unlike Coop,
it's a showdown
with myself,
on the page--for
I am the killer
and I am the hunted,
having already made a lifetime
of enemies, I need to wait
for no one.

I do not walk
into a saloon,
but a tea parlor.
I don't ask
for a shot of red-eye,
but for a Carolina Honey--
medium size and hot.
I take it to a table
as far away
from another human
as I can find,
and take out the book
I'm currently using
to defend myself with,
and a notebook.
I read awhile,
then scratch
against the silence;
read some more,
think about the scratches
and the scars
that disappear
for a second and the armies,
now frozen,
somewhere in my head's battlefields,
standing still
and slugging it out.
I'll work it
for as long as I can,
then shop for dinner;
stop and get the momentary
illusion of something clean
in my hands again
and return to my lair....

But not this Saturday.

This Saturday
I had Grace Kelly in my bed
perfumed and primed;
love had found its way
through doors
I no longer had keys for;
her eyes saw
what I tried to bury;
her mouth and fingers and hands and teeth and tongue and breasts and legs and ankles and cunt
found me and allowed me and welcomed me
home and I opened
to her and with her and for her
and as we spent each other
more was deposited and Friday
became Saturday
and I didn't think
(thank the gods)
about laundry
and tea
and food
and composing
because I was composing
and being composed;
because I was being sung
and singing
and it was so beautiful
as to be unreal,
but it was real
(I swear)
and it was real again
the next day
and the day after that
and, at this point,
that is all
I know
for sure.

I must remember
to take
a breath.
And so do you.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013