SUNDAYS, A FAMILY DAY

were days
to lick
your week's wounds
while trying to avoid
repercusions (& concussions)
& trips to the family's farm
of home-grown kosher guilt.
It was a day littered
with traps
sprung from short-term memory
and long held grudges,
and the poisoned paranoia
of projection missles
launched into an already
scattered mind.

Sunday was a reminder
of not what you were,
but what you'd never become.

But away from the yapping
I would think of journeys
into the mouths of ideas;
each cavity, a tunnel;
each country or little town
held its own language
of pain as I dived
to meet where each exposed nerve
came from; where the roots
were rotten, where they shimmered
naked before my inexperienced eye.

Love was salted with fear;
empathy, a narcissitic fatality.
Seeking safety, I found a bed of lies,
which I was happy to cover myself in,
allowing the whispers to warm me
as I searched for an ending
that didn't feel so goddamn awful.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

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