I'VE BEEN ON A TRANE RUN

For sensual junkies of all stripes...

for about a week now.
Things like this seem to happen to me--
have a taste of Haagan Dazs tonight
& a week later my mug is still buried
in a gallon; read a Bukowski poem
& a month later you can find me
nailed & waving to him
from the next cross.
From birth
I've been a heat-seeking guided missle
of pleasure; tickle a part of my brain
& I climb aboard
without thinking
of schedule or
destination. Let the driver
or conductor worry
about that. Besides,
I reason, they're getting paid
to get me where I'm going; I'm
just along for the ride.

Sure,
sometimes the trip
has been bumpy--
unscheduled stops
for hospitals
& rehabs, a love affair
or two that had me
missing my stop or
missing an organ,
but how are you going to tell a cannibal
that the flesh he's hungered for
might be necrotic?
He'll just laugh
& eat around the edges.

Sixty-one years ago
some tasty black spoonfuls
conjured a be-bop magic
in the alchemy of a white chef's
basement in Hackensack, New Jersey.
Today, April 12, 2019,
I'm feasting
on their labors
of love.
The Trane
endures & tastes
wonderful.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

For all junkies of the senses...

ONE OF THE ONES

who I made room for,
rearranged the furniture,
put on a new coat of paint.
I had to,
so much was I drawn
to her scent,
and her eyes,
brown & flecked with greens,
so much was I drawn
into her cunt
& the ways
of enchantment.
She rouged her nipples
& perfumed her body.
In the dead
of winter fucked me
in a suicide ward
propped against
my bathroom door.
We had drinks with Mailer,
in Provincetown on a frigid February night
as he tried to make her
& she demured but refused me entry
later in our wooden motel
near the sand dunes.
Angrily, I fucked her
in the ass, her submission
a false delicacy
as we tumbled
into arguments
about poetry
and maturity
and reality
and other
insolvables.
I would wait
on the streets
where I knew she walked
and ran into her
by accident
and we'd pick it up
again.
She found me
at St. Mark's Church
waiting on a Bukowski reading
and coaxed me
into the balcony
& took me in her mouth
while he read below.
We were in & out
of each other's blood
for decades.
And still are.
Both in our seventies
and not yet ready
to call it a day.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

FOURTH OF JULY--EIGHT YEARS AGO

CHAPTER III

You can feel New York City, on the verge of a holiday, begin to empty. At first, it’s almost imperceptible, like a slow leak in one of your rear tires. Then, after awhile, you began to notice. The car might pull a little to the right or left. Still not enough to get out and look, but slowly it creeps into your consciousness. Traffic patterns are off; pedestrians seem a bit more determined to get somewhere; there’s a slight suggestion that one or two people out of nine million are gone and suddenly a vista opens where before there were forms and flesh. The city becomes lighter; you feel lighter. Hmm, you say, somethins up.
Shit, of course, it’s the 4th. Am I stupid, or what? Get the hell out. Leave, and leave me my city. Mmm, Chinatown, the piers, ships, water, Chinatown, Cafe La Fortuna, espresso, cheesecake, mmm, yes. Life can be so grand. Fuck it, I’ll call in sick, fuckem, fuckit. Yes.
I felt “giddy,” if “giddy” was a word that ever could be applied to me. From the moment of my realization, to the moment of decision to call in sick, I began to cruise the streets of Manhattan without the usual compulsion and pressure that accompanied me. I had no particular destination, my eyes began to decompress and my breathing, aside from the heaviness of a lifetime of smoking, became easier. The passengers I picked up presented not a problem, even while their tipping conjured up images of torture and death of the worst kind, they were bracketed by my own good will and humor. Drivers still made the dumbest of moves, changing lanes without looking--almost as if they thought they were beyond physics and probabilities. (God bless them, I thought). They shot left hand turns from the extreme right hand lane. (Sure, go ahead); stopped in the middle of intersections and tried to creep next to the opposite curb before getting killed by some irate truck driver or greaser, (Good luck, brother); and then there were those whose heads barely came up to the steering wheel who were the most frightening. Am I in Florida? I asked myself. Connecticut, maybe? Death driven missiles going up and down the eastern seaboard and in dense, overpopulated areas-- but maybe not overpopulated for long! Yet nothing, short of a head on collision with death, would have altered the sense of joy I was feeling. Though, beyond the obvious, I couldn’t tell you why. Whatever place offered itself up to me because of this exodus, I knew I would be going and doing without the usual throng of New York City’s humanity.
I had just swerved to avoid a bike messenger who looked back at me like it was my fault. Maybe it was? It pushed me into the extreme left lane on Third Avenue, and into a fare. She was tall, a bit overweight, and fumbling with packages. She barely had her wrist protruding from her bags, but I saw her meaning easy enough. I glided to a stop.
“You want to put those in the trunk?” I asked.
“Yes, that would help,” she replied, a faint whiff of sarcasm in her voice.
I put my emergency flashers on, opened the trunk, got out and helped her unburden herself. The heat of the day had caused her to perspire to such an extent that her face glistened. Her blouse was darkly etched with splotches of sweat, mostly underneath her arms, and in the small of her back. I took one package after the next and put them in the trunk. She took one of her hands and shielded the sun from her eyes as she took me in. “Thank you,” she finally said, “not many drivers do that these days.”
I didn’t say anything as I closed the trunk, stepped around her, and got back into the cab. “Where to?” I asked, after she closed the door.
“Downtown, near Wall Street.”
“You mind if I take the F.D.R., it’s quicker?”
“No, by all means. Once we’re off the Drive I’ll direct you from there.”
“Sure,” I said. Even when I knew the address, I would much prefer them to direct me. This way, if there was traffic, construction, or anything that slowed us down, they couldn’t say shit. I was going crosstown, heading for the entrance to the Drive on 65th Street.
“Usually I have a driver. I mean, my firm does. But I forgot that this is the Fourth of July weekend and by the time my turn came, the big big bosses reserved them all.”
“I know, whatareyagonnado?” I replied. The more she talked, the less I liked her.
“You don’t look like a cab driver...Charles.”
I looked in the rear view mirror and saw her craning her neck to read my name off the license that every cabbie was required to post, facing the passengers.
“Yeah, well, The world is full of shipping clerks who have read The Harvard Classics.
“Mmm. I like that Charles.”
“Me, too, I wish I’d written it.”
“Are you a writer?”
“I’m a writer--when I write. When I don’t write, I’m a cab driver, or whatever it is I’m doing at the moment.”
The streets and buildings whizzed by, dripping pellets of water from the air-conditioners that hit the pavement or bushes from on high. Soon we would be entering the Drive. Almost over, I said to myself.
“Bukowski wrote that, didn’t he?” she asked, but I knew she already knew the answer.
“Yes, Buk wrote it.”
“Which work was it from?” she asked, but I knew she knew that as well.
“It was an epigraph to a book of his poems, Mockingbird Wish Me Luck.”
“Oh yes, of course. I always thought he was a better poet.”
So did I, but I didn’t respond.
“My name is Lilith, by the way.”
“Nice to meetcha, Lilith.” I would have preferred to be quiet on this ride. The water and movement of the car was all I needed to relax for a few minutes. It gave me time to think about nothing in particular, and everything in general.
“Who else do you like?”
Her question brought me back from my brief respite. “Huh?” was all I was able to manage to say.
“Who are some of the other writers you like? Where were you just now?”
“I never know how to answer that--either question. I just like who I like...and been where I was.”
“Me too!” she almost shouted out. “Maybe we’ll get to that other question later. But let me guess, and not only limited to writers alright?”
It was too late; I was trapped. “Fire away,” I said. I was in the left hand lane, doing about fifty, easing my way around the 23rd Street curve.
She was right on the money with most, but some of the painters she mentioned I didn’t know who the hell they were.
I turned off the Drive, below The Brooklyn Bridge.
“Make a left here and then another left on Maiden Lane. I’m a few blocks from there.”
I took a left.
“How old are you?’ she asked.
“Sixty, plus.”
“That’s good.”
“For who?”
“Me, of course.”
“Really? Why’s that?”
“I could take real good care of you for awhile, then you’d die and I’d still be young enough to go on, find another, maybe not like you, but find another I would.”
“That’s reassuring.” Her conversation was making me nervous, but I wanted company of the female sort and, from what I could see from my rear view mirror, she was not at all bad looking. Now, if I could somehow stem her flow of words... She directed me to her building, a big apartment complex that fitted in with all the other concrete monstrosities in the area.
“O.K. my dear, that will be fourteen seventy, and I’ll help you with your packages.”
“Have dinner with me tonight? Don’t say, ‘no’ because I know you’re not doing anything.”
“How do you know that?”
“Are you doing anything tonight?”
“No, I’m not.”
“I’ll pick up the check, I promise, and not for any feminine power crap, but just because I’m in a position to, and you’re not. No strings, either.”
“Where and when?” I quickly said.
She gave me the name of the place, address and time, paid the fare with a healthy tip added on, and left the cab. I opened the trunk, but by that time her doorman had come to assist her. I stayed where I was and watched her walk to the entrance of her building. Flat Jewish ass, I said to myself, my mother had one, most of the Jewish babes I knew growing up had one, most of the Jewish girls I knew, period, had one. But she was tall, even if a bit overweight, good-looking in this intense Jewish way, and she was picking up the tab. Hell, what the hell?
I put my OFF DUTY light on, feeling as if I had just resigned--at least for the next four days--from the world, and made it back to my cab company where I told the alternate dispatcher that I wasn’t feeling too well and doubted that I could make it in tomorrow. He mumbled that he was sorry, which was all the commiseration I could expect from him, but he was quick to inform me that he couldn’t give me back my eighty-five bucks for the shift. I asked whether he could apply it towards next weeks payment.
“No can do,” he stated.
“Chinese, huh?” I replied, but didn’t wait for his answer.

From my novel, THE TROUBLE WITH DREAMS

© 2015 Norman Savage

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

THERE'S NOTHING AS HOT

For DG

as a good Catholic girl
gone bad.
All that genuflecting,
all those wafers,
wine, whispered confessions
in dark wood confines,
aged from guilt,
candles & sin & Hail
Mary's cannot predict
what's happening
under the hood.

She grew-up
in a Father Knows Best home:
Robert Young wasn't as nice:
patched-elbow cardigans
and a pipe-pinched mouth
didn't say a word;
a Jane Wyman mother
saw faces
in her apple pies
& named them after
Saints.
One day
all those Christ'
came off the cross
& hitched south.

I saw her
when I was charging merchandise
in Bloomingdales on stolen
credit cards and returning them
for cash to feed a junk habit.
She modeled and worked
behind the glove counter.
I had no choice
but to buy gloves,
many gloves.
If I were straight
a woman who looked like her
would have unnerved me; it
would be impossible for me
to approach.
But junk is the blood
of cowards. And every cell
that was still alive
moved me forward
despite the fear.

Her eyes were mahogany
but flecked with green
and lit with danger.
She was reading Mark Stranded,
John Ash and all those NY
concrete intellectuals; I read her
Roi & Paul & Hank & Savage
& put a smile on her face,
rhythm in her step & we
laughed & loved & fought
& loved some more & it was 1971
& we were in the thick of it.

And we did that off & on
for the next decade
& then split.
Our contact was few
& far between
until the other day.
She had sold off
The Father Knows Best house
& was living in a small town
outside of Atlantic City,
but came into town to see me.
We hit the old spots--
a little Italian joint, Emilio's,
and then Serendipity for dessert.
Nothing is lost
to memory.
Two old shoes
fitting easily
inside them:
a frigid winter night
in detox, her birthday,
she came onto the ward
in a fur coat
wearing nothing
under that
& we held the bathroom door
shut while we made it;
the Bukowski reading
at St. Marks while she took
me on the balcony & performed
her own verse.
"Remember,"
she asked,
"how I rouged my nipples?"
"Yes, I remember."
"They're not pretty anymore,
my tits; now you need a compass
to find them. Old balloons
at the end of a New Year Eve party;
you don't notice them anymore; you
just swat your hand at them
to get them out of the way."
"My dear, my dear,
my body is shot too--
fucking is like trying to shoot pool
with a rope."
"You could always make me laugh, Savage."
Her hands were more beautiful than ever:
her veins, blue and magnificent,
threatened to come out of her skin.
"I knew you'd age with the grace
of a Georgia O'Keefe, Jean Moreau."

We brought each other
up to speed and walked.
The hotel I had lived in then
is gone, as is Rumplemeyers,
most of The Plaza and checker cabs.
But we're no different. No older,
no younger. And not wiser.
We've made it
despite the odds.
We'll do it again
soon, we said.
We weren't stupid enough
to set a date.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014

SICK KIDS

It's funny
how you find
each other
at different times
through the years
and then are glued,
without realizing it,
by certain deformities:
a blind eye,
tear-ducts
that are dried
from a careless shot
of penicillin when a child,
a bum leg, a hairlip,
a stutter,
diabetes, violent
parentage, a murmur
of the heart...
All of us found a way
to compensate:
a humor both ribald
and profane, a cleverness
outwitting death;
an alchemist's brew
to survive...and luck
in a shot glass
a syringe
or another outlet
of depravity...
Over half a century
tiptoeing or shouldering through
we thought
we knew
the terrain; once again
we were fooled because
deep down
we chose
to remain
fools. And that's alright.
Some of those friends
are famous
and some quite rich.
I am neither,
but still known
to a very small
and I'd imagine
shrinking circle.

One woman
who is well known
in literary and artistic
battlefields called
with a request:
for a few hours
over a weekend
meet her
at a hospital
that drips with cancer
and death and read
some stuff
to some of the kids
on the runway waiting
for a takeoff
that hopefully
will be aborted.
(How we still love
to be read to).
A few years back
when asked to do that,
I asked for the teenagers,
knowing next to nothing
about children.
I was given the same age,
but different faces.

The kids were either wheeled in,
or came attached to mobile I.V.'s,
hooked-up to oxygen tubes and masks,
or shuffled in and plopped down from radiation,
eyes red and vacant, bone tired
at thirteen into the first available chair or couch.
There was a constant drip-drop
dripping yellowish fluid in their arms,
or necks.
"Stop Staring At My Tits, Mister," I read first
to wake them the fuck up, by Bukowski. Some grinned,
others smiled, still others laughed
out loud. Sometimes you need permission
to laugh. To laugh at yourself
and laugh at death. Laughing fucks
with death. It makes death
crazy. Teases it with life.
I followed with a few more by Buk
and finished it with a few by Selby;
"A Little Respect," being the last.
I was a facilitator, a conductor.
I can't say for sure,
but I felt better than those kids felt
afterwards and they seemed to feel quite good.

We all went afterwards
to the famous man's restaurant
in the West Village. Attention
was paid to us--actually
to them. I knew I was an appendage
and that was O.K., too.
We talked about everything
except the kids: Cannes,
Vegas, who's fucking who,
who's old, over the hill
and demented and who's
just demented; who's a real artist
and who's a fake; who's washed-up,
strung-up strung-out hung-up hung-out
and dried--the usual shit.
But today, though,
we did not get to the uselessness
of "art." We simply
didn't need
to go there.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013