Photos by Jonathan Zap    John “Jack” Spenser Savage 1989-2013

Jack Savage was, and is, one of the greatest poetic voices of his generation. It’s not that I’ve read so many millennial generation poets, it’s a general feeling I have based on the power with which Jack’s poetic voice is the voice of the soul. Sometimes this poetic voice is celebratory, at other times it is struggling and even tormented. But it is always profound, authentic, accessible and deeply present with the reader. Jack’s voice has a presence, an emotional immediacy and intimacy with a sympathetic reader that is comparable to Walt Whitman, who was Jack’s greatest poetic inspiration. Jack’s poems, even the ones that he wrote when he was 19, do not seem like an awkward, adolescent attempt at being Whitmanesque. They are alike, because both poets are voices of the soul. To experience these poems is an opportunity to hear the voice of the soul, a voice that gets drowned out by the noisy bustle and haste of modern life. The voice of the soul is not always happy. It can experience glorious ecstasies and transcendence–Jack’s poems are filled with jeweled and glowing examples of this sort of divine exuberance. But the voice of the soul can also be the voice of  the dark night of the soul, and Jack had his share of those to tell of too. As he puts it,  “And I am divine in my worst hour as much as I am in my best.”  When you read these poems, draw close to them, sit across from his voice with a glass of wine or tea, it will be a very deep and intimate conversation.

Some poems have the celebratory and euphoric life energy of a very young adventurer

IV

As a Vine Rambles through a Vineyard  (excerpt)

Rambling down an old dirt road.

Strong, self-reliant, and satisfied

I tramp along, marching to bold, original rhythms.

(There are so many rhythms,

Each so filled with originality and vitality,

All of them woven into this great symphony.

Listen close, can you hear them?)

Blossoms now furnish the womb of my mind,

As this unceasing, undulating life force surges through the land and through me.

I laugh and inhale deeply, completely contented,

Joyous, exuberant, and brimming with bright vitality

Knowing I possess everything I need to own,

Knowing that I am amiable, and that when I am amiable, so too is the world.   

 

Others reflect the depths of a soul in torment contemplating suicide

I

Amidst my Catastrophe   (excerpt)

Amidst my catastrophe

(The one my hands crave)

Among the ruins of my loss

Inside the windowless chambers of my awful defeat 

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The Naive Urgency of Man

My old life was a sanctuary

Where every flower grew

And love, she was my mistress

In everything I’d do.

All roads were open then,

Sprawling across the land.

 

I destroyed that monastery

With the naive urgency of man

 

                Jack posing with plastic skull and video effects on a plasma screen in Paul’s basement

Jack at the National Rainbow Gathering in Wyoming, 2008

IX

Tossing and Turning

 

The musicality of the stars blesses the soft green earth as gentle traces of the dawn inch into the sky

Tossing and turning and

Tossing and turning in my unsleepable bed

The stars diamond, ephemeral brilliance cascades upon the earth from those bejewelled skies in these final twilight hours

All night long, apparitions have paraded before my restless eyes in their spectral procession

Locked inside the ghostly halls of hunger,

Disturbing my slumbers

Tossing me, turning me.

Now through the grace of some benevolence I’m forced to leave my bed

And rise with the rising morning.

I stumble out of bed and stagger out onto the broken pavements into the hallucinatory ethereal streets, to resume my sacred part in the profound instrumentality that is earth

The first beams of sunlight cascade through the heavens

The orchestral symphony in every cell of the universe stirs magnetically in the magnitude of this glory

Pore by pore sunrise animates the earth

The power of the day begins to stir.

 

I ramble along these deserted morning streets, empty but for an occasional clear eyed morning rambler

Or an early car gracing the grateful streets.

The birds claim this sanctuary

Extracting complex medleys from the air for their orchestrated hymns

Those melodies are embroidered upon the fabric of the day

They fortify the promise of a magnificently bountiful and plenteous day

What multidimensional depths of the soul that promise reaches?

 

I’ve taken these gems and joys and riches for granted for too long.

How wealthy I am, how rich life is.

I possess riches greater than all seas.

I am tired of being obsessed with myself

Fortify me with gratitude.

What is this unrelenting self-obsession?

Greed, sorrow, vengeance, hate

They have brought such an onslaught of trouble, anguish and worry

Hordes more than they have deflected or protected me from

(That is no fortified citadel, no matter what they say)

And I have absorbed those abject miseries.

So much grief and sorrow I could avoid if I only devoted myself to goodness and the spread of goodness on earth

To helping others,

To good health, and compassion, and celebration and praise

To finding the good and the beautiful.

I don’t know why I worry so long and so hard

As though I were the only man to have ever suffered

The first man to have ever lived

As though I am some magnificent sufferer living among mankind.

 

The religiosity of experience,

The eternal concert sanctifying the eyes, the ears and the body.

This incomprehensible masterpiece.

The cathedral of this morning

Soaked and dripping with vitality

The lush colourful tapestry of the dawn

Layered, moving and alive.

In bewildered reverence, piously I walk through this vital sea of sensuousness

Sleep clings to my mind like moss as I stroll in morning grace along these verdant summer pathways

At ease, leisurely, expansively.

Empowered by the strength of each moment

The continuous eruption of energy, exploding vividly from the burning fuse of every instant.

Absorbing those fountainous, electric sparks continuously

Transmuting them mysteriously into energy,

Strengthened thus to godlike proportions.

Allowing the song of myself to unfold and expound prolifically, magnificently

Accepting with great gregariousness and pleasure the music it evokes interweaving with the scintillating fabric of existence.

 

Everything that happens has been germinating for billions of years.

There is an intuitive balance to all of nature and the cosmos.

Nothing is superfluous.

Every transpiring event requires the collaboration and the ingenious, thousand handed engineering of the entire cosmos

Every blossomed moment requires complete validation from the magnitude of all time and space

Every speck of dirt belongs, every role played has been ordained

Nothing is lost, nothing is irrelevant

Always and forever onwards and upwards.

 

Jack, stop your ruminations on the night

Stop this endless worry over your sins

These are your sins

This is your soul

That is enough.

Cast aside those vain contrivances

Cease your demands and doubts and you will live in the most glorious kingdom today

Your soul will blossom more bountifully than any ever has

Know in the depth of your soul the excellence and greatness of all the universe

Allow that fertile, nourishing soil to sink and settle at the deepest, darkest waters of your oceans,

Allow it to fecundate your earth today

Entrust your body and mind to the smiling, grandfather hands of the eternal moment and be guided along the illuminated path of divinity.

 

(A thousand what ifs

A thousand complaints

But, Jack, can you imagine, can you truly imagine a life different from the one you have now?)

 

Evil is in my heart

Sin is in my soul

Base aspirations belong to me,

All the perverse hungers of the contemptible and hideously fiendish are mine

And I am divine in my worst hour as much as I am in my best.

And still, unwaveringly I pledge allegiance to my soul

In the beatitude of my days

In the darkness of my nights

I pledge allegiance to my soul

Filled with sorrows though I may be

Often teetering on the heartbroken precipice of tears I may be as waterfalls of sorrow roar within me,

Tumbling mightily from my rocky cliffs

Deepening the sweet clear pools of my soul.

But I am also beaming all the time with ineffable light, and I am filled with love and with hope too

And I am brimming with an authentic  and strong desire to do good as well.

And I know now through all the dregs I have trudged

Through the toxic mire

Through my endless miseries

Through my days of bitter impotence

Through the cancer of my greed

Through my death wishes and poison swallowing

There was, all along, a sweet, innocent hatchling bird inside of me

And it was that little hatchling bird of love tittering gently within me that saved my life

Somehow still alive, somehow still singing

Whose gentle melodies nourished my ailing soul during those years of sickness and fog

(Gaining nourishment from those melodies as a tree drinks water from earthen roots in the ground)

Whose sweet song cleared the mire from my sickened, bloodshot eyes,

Now I shall nourish it

So that it may grow and live and thrive, and fly and call; a champion of the skies.

And the variety of my seeds,

Scattered through the fibre of my being

Those little seedlings who lived in my beaten earth

Shelled, hard, small, potent

Colourful with seed-like potential

I’ll nourish them, grow them, water them and tend to them

Sufficiently buried in my soil until they explode with the unstoppable power of rocks,

Until the righteous day those seeds grow into powerful trees,

Titans of love

Resounding proudly in the chorus of my magnanimous forests.

 

Continuing my stroll through this sapling earth

Appreciating the transience of this wild moment

Immersed in this ocean of sensuousness

The wet green morning air

The breathing earth

The magisterial oil lamp of existence

The mystic consciousness permeating time and space

The exuberance now bursting from my heart as those energies baptize me and I baptize them,

As this ethereal morning bathes me.

Marvelling upon the green, misty morning, how sweet its dew tastes permeating my skin.

I think now there is nothing more beautiful to look at than the knotted limbs of the trees graciously harbouring the soft, moist earth

Archetypal supreme justices

They stand like cosmic guardians of eternity

Telepathic communicators to the divine transmitting all the time through the expanses of space and heaven

Stencilled with intricate ancient mystic patterns

Titans of the earth

At work constantly renewing the planetary soul of this world.

Now these city streets; the endless stream of densely storied footsteps they have graciously received, supported and encouraged onwards, ever onwards

The extensive monarchies reigning beneath them

(How I love these streets, even when I say I don’t)

The mad ecstatic pulse of a metropolis

The wild pulsating energy vibrating along its streets

Energy, movement, stories, life.

The tranquility of a Minnesota cabin

The stillness of a lake at dawn

The fluidity and self-assuredness of a bird in flight right now before me, weaving its invisible thread through the tapestry of air,

How vast and intricate the system of its small body; the clasping of its wings, the beating of its heart, the rising of its lungs, the beams of its eyes, the elegant symphony of its movement

The history of a grain of sand

A morning jogger passing by

An attractive mother pushing a stroller

A professional driving to work

All these stories trembling in the everlasting symphony

How profound everything is

The experience of existence

The ecstatic universe.

 

Mired in doubt, guilt and hangovers

Mired in ignorance, filth and debauchery

Mired in drinking, rejection and betrayal

Mired in porn, greed and corruption

Mired in vengeance, blood lust and hate

Mired in addiction, malice and glamour

Mired in alcohol, revenge and competitiveness

Mired in power, business and bank accounts

Mired in shipwrecks, blood and sand

Mired in sickness, fear and anxiety

Mired in desolation, shame, and failure

Mired in vanity, fame and lies

Mired in insecurity, cruelty and regret

Mired in details, details, details

Mired in this holy human conundrum

 

And yet here I stand

And I’ll stand for triumph and for joy, proudly

In spite of the clogged body, my secret monstrosities

In spite of dirtiness, and all this craziness

In spite of this bloody fucking mess

I stand like a springtime garden

Exploding with vitality

Exploding with colour

Tomatoes, azaleas, roses, vines, dirt, insects, trees, birds, water

All bursting forth from me uninhibitedly

I think, I feel, I breathe, I move, I act, I fail, I fear, I love, I regret, I worry, I triumph

I am alive

I am human

I believe in life and I believe in my humanity

And I’m done resisting my destiny.

 

Acting as I myself, alone see fit,

Done modelling myself on that false template of other men

Done following fools into that ditch.

I’ll walk my own road with determination and with will

I’ll walk my road with compassion as best I know how

Though I will fear, fail and falter again I am done resisting my destiny

I must embrace the human experience.

 

Despite these rags it is because of my riches I walk the road I walk

An old and timeless soul

Wrinkled rucksack on my back

Trotting down these roads with interest, happy and bemused, over the brown green country hills at sunset, an exuberant smile splayed on my face.

(The roads will never be quite perfect

But they are quite suitable and good for my two feet to trod.)

My story, not so very interesting as I thought,

My failures, perhaps not as important as I supposed them to be

I am so fucking tired of taking myself so seriously

(Life is serious, but that doesn’t mean I have to take myself so grossly, so hideously, so fiendishly serious)

I am so sick of glamorizing my pain

The story of my fall no longer interests me; only the story of my return, and the splendours redemption of my sunrise.

I must embrace the human experience.

Those people I see, I must be with them.

Ah, people, what complex mysteries?

Their stories are long, complex and strange too,

Riddled with adversity and cut by sorrow too,

They deserve compassion, sympathy and praise.

I must return to the people.

Aiding the good and aiding the wicked equally, none shall be exempt.

 

The surging power inherent in every moment

As coal and diamonds meditating in the raw earth.

It is time I claimed those sacred, endless, bountiful, illuminated reserves of power

(As discovering an entire kingdom full of plump wooden treasure chests filled with gold and rubies and pearls)

Alive within the throbbing, luminous coordinates of my position inside this infinite, vital, gridded network, extending beyond heavens eternity.

Electrified by that infinite system of connections

Enlarged there to towering and benevolent heights.

And the traffic will continuously baptize me

Inside the extensive inroads of this dense elaborate maze

And in that mad kinetic frenzy: chaos and confusion, anxiety;

The marrow of this living.

Let me speak the colourful language of the earth

Translating the colourful compassion of trees

Their empathic understanding, their quiet, vibrant smiles

Bemused and happy as Buddha’s face while mankind buzzes from task to frenzied task.

I’ll be my own priest and my own doctor,

My own King.

No one else shall be my King.

The King’s authority has been restored.

 

Give up the ghost Jack,

Give up that ghost.

Life is much more beautiful than I could have imagined

And I am much more beautiful than I could have ever known.

Life is infinitely, inexpressibly greater than all art, philosophy and religion.

Experience is more profound and beautiful than all paintings, poems, songs, and movies combined,

Language is grossly inadequate to express the beauty, marvel and wonder that I am and exist in

I am much more beautiful than I could have ever known.

 

And I believe in the sanctity of existence

Though I am constantly beleaguered.

I want to be indiscriminate with my nourishing love

Though I am constantly beleaguered.

Someday I will return to the kingdom, I know,

Even though I am constantly beleaguered.

 

All of my experiences are a part of me like some great patch work quilt.

My past still thrives within me feeding the wellspring of this instant

I express them through myself ceaselessly.

Absorbing the sights sounds scents and seasons of the earth

Filtering those through myself ceaselessly as well,

Renewed continuously by the crystalline, everlasting fountain of existence

 

I long to release the precious butterflies of my experience.

Some dark black and malevolent

Some with sadly damaged wings, perforated unevenly around the tragically damaged edges

Some with extravagant color, spackled with royal algorithms

Sprinkling magic and stars through the air

All fluttering from me in a colourful frenzied flock, exuberantly, magnificently, constantly.

I have tried overthrowing what I am

It is impossible

I cannot yield to anything but what I am.

Not to fear the old established critics,

Their eyes have grown yellow and discoloured from the breath of  time.

I really don’t give a shit about the old masters

Their’s was fine,

Mine, incomparably glorious.

I’ll sing my unparalleled songs of glory loudly, triumphantly

Even if I extract only a single piece of fruit from the labours of an entire farm.

I’ll embrace my age irresistibly, and embrace my day and sing the zeitgeist that is my soul.

Fluid and congruent as molten, liquid metal

Coming fully into the stream of who I am

Not struggling to be like anyone but who I am

Done following fools into that ditch.

 

Now I walk back from the park towards the house I live in

The sun leaves its cradle

People rise, nourished with sleep

The city bristles with health and awakening

Telephones ring, papers are shuffled

Ideas are discussed

Rivers of traffic engulf the streets

(A thousand incomprehensible stories in each car)

The clank and clamour of living, the inching along of civilization.

Sitting now on the steps outside my loving home, admiring my mother’s garden so beautiful, artistic and vibrant.

The flowers open their tender lungs to the coming suns nourishing, viscousness

I’m instilled with dawn’s tranquility,

Caressed by the clean air, by the breeze.

Even though this is just a moment which too shall pass I can see that for now so I smile as I rise

To embark with singular devotion and not stop until I’m done.

XXXIV

To The Unspeakable

Thank you

And

I’m sorry.

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For more of Jack’s poems and images:

 Savage Reflections — The Soulful Poetry of Jack Savage