GETTING NUTTIER IN SMALL DOSES

Recently,
I've come to expect
sidewalks to open up
and swallow me
each time I go out
to buy a pack of smokes
or container of coffee.
If I make it
out of the chasm
and into the store,
the tobacco I'm handed
needs to be cured
and the coffee
is left to be ground.

Just the other day
I waited on the tracks
for a train to take me home.
I entered from below
the trestle
to cane-backed seats,
dry heat and shoulder straps.
Everyone was polite.
No one spoke.
It was like an limited truce
among barbarians. A limited peace
between warring lovers
knowing the divorce will arrive
at the next stop.

But I was on the wrong track
and now on the wrong train,
going down when
I should be going up,
staying on
when I should be getting off.
Yet I was home.
Coney Island shone
like it once did
when three roller-coasters
rock 'n rolled into a fireworks sky;
when there were fortune tellers and
do-wop artists giving it away;
when sailors were be hustled
or rolled by gum-cracking dolls
and head-bashing Italians;
there were bumper-cars
and batting ranges, miniature golf
and water-gun races, nickel and quarter
pitches and Baby Doll lounges and smells
of life lived for a minute
around the edges;
when Nathan's was three deep
at every counter
and there were fresh clams
and fried shrimps
for 75 cents and a buck,
a chow mein sandwich,
and barbecue, a lobster roll
with real lobster meat
for a buck and a quarter
and franks were just a quarter
and fries were a dime;
when there were bowls of mustard
and big thick wooden tongue depressor sticks
to slather it on before you were afraid
of disease and saliva and sickness
of intent.
And there was my girlfriend,
her cat's green eyes
narrowing on me in the crowd,
fixing me,
before her demons took aim,
and bringing me to her side
of the day's smile.

I was crazy then.
It's easy
to admit that.
Maybe too easy
because craziness then
was absorbed
into youth's blotter
and forgiven,
and sometimes even prized
mistaken like the gift
of personality and courage,
recklessness and character,
even an intelligence
of despair and defiance
and, in fact, I can argue,
still is...except...
except I knew
I was lost then,
but also knew
I'd always
be found--a contradiction
of convenience. Juggling
became my art.
If I could get there,
if I could just make it there,
any time of the day or night,
in any weather in any season,
a greaser a gangster a Jewish granny
Italian mama or a Jesuit, guinea, mick, nigger
or spick hanging out in a kitchen, poolroom,
Faber's Fascination, cheese box basketball court,
poker action, luncheonette, bar or bagel store,
I'd find somebody
to take me in.

I took comfort
that all the trains
led to Coney Island, a.k.a. Stillwell Avenue,
a.k.a. Norton's Point.
There was even a hotel, The Terminal Hotel,
across from the graveyard
for iron horses; and should I ever stumble
enough there's
a place of red lights
and brown paper bags,
of Kings and Queens fallen
through their own sidewalk's
cracks and fissures
into a Hellish Oz
that would catch me,
too.

But now,
a little bit older
and a little bit crazier,
I have to remember the future
to make it
back to the past
and mistake that
for the present
so I can know it
and rest.

Gimme another,
willya?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014