I WON'T PAY FOR YOUR LOVE,

For P, a black cat prowling...

but I'll gladly pay for your book.
Some work
is too dear
while others are,
as they say,
"on the arm."

"Love," a miserable shape-shifter,
is maleable, wily, untrustworthy,
dangerous in its excess
& yet more so
in its absence;
it's unhinged, schized,
juiced with questions,
& arid of answers...
& always,
always, costs
much more than you ever thought.

While a book
no matter how twisty,
no matter how difficult,
is solid, its pages glued,
its letters made of concrete
spawns words which spawns sentences
which the eye can see & digest until
it makes sense
or doesn't; you're enriched
or you move on. But
in all accounts,
if the writer is serious,
you know that those words
were fought over, paid for,
in the only currancy art knows:
blood.

And so, my dear,
if I love you,
or you me--
that's our problem.
It's our Coney Island funhouse
or madhouse
or doghouse
of the mind.
But your book exists
outside that as yours,
your peculiar take
on this carnival,
as a testament
of a survival
outside the bounds
of a pedestrian matrimony;
an affirmation
in the boldest sense
of a life lived
despite the odds
of an early exit,
as revenge
for a life lived
without permission
accepting payment
like the grandest of hooker's acknowledgement
of just what a fantastic lover she is.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

MARY TYLER MOORE IS DEAD

and I can't say I'm sorry.
I spoke to her once
while she was in Canada
filming some bullshit
and I was holed up
in my Greenwich Village pad
bloody and bandaged and minus
four toes and still trying
to dream and she
was in a phone booth
with a second or two,
she told me,
between takes.
I'd tried for years
to get my memoir to her: Confessions
Of An Uncontrolled Diabetic.
I tried through my doctors,
her publicist, her husband's colleagues,
and finally through her assistants.
The years were 1982 through '85
and she was living in the San Remo.
I was convinced that between the insulin shocks,
insulin shots, piss testing, food deprivations,
depressions from sugar highs, anger from the lows,
a commonality of Brooklyn, doctors, fears and
foreboding, she'd get behind the work if
she read it, though I never particularly liked
her work: too pretty, too perky, too sweet,
too American, but, hey, she held some ins
to my outs.
She was worth a shot.
Getting published,
getting validated,
getting out of this thing
called "life" was worth
whatever lies
I had to tell.
An actor friend of mine
knew one of her assistants
and so I traipsed up to the San Remo
and dropped the book off for her
with the militarily clad doorman.
After a year
I forgot about it.
And then a phone call
on a rain slicked day.
She was probably sorry
she didn't get my answering machine.
After my hello
she told me who she was.
"Sorry," she said,
"I can't get involved with this."
I just held the receiver.
"Best of luck," she said,
and hung up.
I could hear her voice catch.
I heard, "I'd really like to, but..."
kinda tone.
I'd suspected the work cut too close
to Mary's bone and wasn't surprised
a decade later when she wrote about
her alcoholism and the less savory
parts of her so called charmed life.
"Fuck her," I said at the time
and went back to what I did best:
hide
behind words
& substances.

I might have another eleven years
to go--give or take--and am not displeased
about the arc my life has taken
before and after Mary.
Redford must have sensed, too,
her drunken selfishness and filmed it.
Really,
it was her most honest role.
I should know:
I've played it
once or twice
myself.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017

TODAY

I sold
little pieces
of my soul--
Selby, Crews,
Bukowski, Joyce,
Celine, Ginsberg,
Morrison, Roth,
Poe & Jones,
& more
before I had
to get to work
& sell a little more.

By selling them,
I've killed
a little more
of this.

I'll
come home
after work
and look,
and look
again: holes
& scars.

The addition now
is by subtraction;
I'm nearer
than further
& somewhere
there's a
balance.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

TEACHING OTHERS

how to live
with my disease
is what I'll do
come end of April.
It simply landed
in my lap
like a cat
and I'd be a fool
not to let it
nestle there.
I'll do it
downtown
& uptown,
Monday
to Friday
with old fucks
& young
newly diagnosed
& scared
shitless.

I'll be paid
handsomely.
I don't
deserve
it, but
who does?
I'll be working
with nurses
& interns
& residents
& reps
and hope
as I do
always
that the pretty ones
will turn kindly
to a phrase
or a well put together
sentence.
I'll be on the lookout
for storage rooms
of intimacy
and an unguarded vial
of morphine
or dilaudid.
I'll tease myself
with love
that might supply
my book
with a different
ending.
Here's hoping
that it does
before I do.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015