MOTHS & FLAMES

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My in-box
is a tinderbox
of maybes.
And I come
from a long line
of seekers:
Catullus & Shelley
& Byron & all those
rowboat suicides
have made my pebbled path
no easier to traverse,
but fun to follow.

Words have lit
the back alleys
of madness
& another has
found me
behind those
choreographed characters
at my age
now.

In this heat
we look toward
Christmas.
I'll begin
to prepare
my lair
now...

Jingle Bells.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

QUASIMODO IN DRAG

Feet crippled
from mistakes made
before birth;
a girlish giggle
underfoot.
I look
for scarred veins
in the crooks
of elbows--friends?
or foes?
Dreams maintain
a righteousness
of misapprehension.

So many
write me now:
Russia, France, England,
the Ukraine and Canada,
Mexico & even
NYC where
there are more skirts
per square inch
than concrete wombs.
They offer me a bed
& understanding.
They know me,
they tell me.
They flirt
with words.
I flirt
with words.
It is only
writing
when it's being
written,
otherwise
it's madness.

Still,
it's nice
to know
a shower
& coffee
sits somewhere
outside my lair.
While I,
more crippled
than a moment
before, sends
out the bait.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

JUST LOOKING,

I say
wordlessly
to all the pretty chicks
who look back
but move on.
The parts of my body
necessary
for that type of commerce
can only rent,
but even that
I'm not sure of.
I've been profligate
& foolish
in equal measure,
though that's
easy to say
now.

Thirty-one years ago
I helped my disease
saw-off half my foot.
At that time
I wanted to slow down time
while speeding up my demise.
I had a blood-jet mania
for propulsion & my usual
exits were backed-up
& stalled. Nothing
worked. "What
should I do now?" I asked
my surgeon.
"We all
have just so many steps,"
he replied, "use them
wisely."

And that is why
I still look--
I'm not dead
yet.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

BREAKING THE SURFACE--FROM: THE TROUBLE WITH DREAMS

CHAPTER VIII

(The broken blocks of concrete, from where they came I didn’t know, had these rusted, spiral looking, pipes coming out of them. They lay either just past the lip of the ocean or, during high tide, ten to thirty yards in the water. The wind and ice laced rain scratched my face. I walked along the circumference of the ridge above the ocean, looking down at the rocks, some huge and some not so, busted up tin cans, rusted by the sea, and in one place the frame of a car, its steel the color of burnt orange, lying there in the water, half submerged. Sometimes, just the hood would be visible, other times you could see the water inside as high as the topmost part of the windshield, and at other times you could make out the grill, though it was impossible to name the make of the car. What’s in the trunk, I used to wonder: a body, weapons, a cache of gold, a valise filled with water logged bills? Have they looked? Has anyone looked? I scampered down the rocks, my sneakers slipping and sliding off the greenish black and slimy seaweed, holding the uppermost rock with one hand and getting a hold on the one lower until I could safely jump off one and onto the beach. My feet sunk into the wet sand. It felt good. My ankles and legs, so young and giving, cushioned the jump and gave me a feeling of exhilaration while lifting off and flying in the air, landing precisely where I wanted to. I wiped the rain from my eyes and face and walked along the beach like an explorer warrior, ready to conquer a new land.)

Blood pressure and bedpans, beeps and bright-eyed interns, brought me back from the deep. Some new doctor was telling these kids about my case in the language doctor’s use, like I wasn’t in the room. It gave me the chance to look at the calves of this young Japanese intern. She wore a skirt that ended at her knees, a white shirt which was tucked into her waistband, and the obligatory white jacket with pens, notebooks and papers sticking out of every pocket. Her jet black hair shimmered and framed a face that could have been a mix of Asian and Caucasian, but her mom was definitely Asian. She was altogether beautiful. I knew what was up above those knees and didn’t mind that when she turned to look at me she knew what I was thinking of. Cautiously, she smiled.
“Doctor,” I called over to her.
All heads turned toward me.
“The pretty doctor is the one I want to speak to. I’d like to ask her something.”
She looked over to her superior for approval. He smiled and nodded his head. She walked over to my bedside and in her best beside manner said, “What would you like to ask me?”
“Doctor, why is there this pain in my heart where love should be?”
Her smile radiated out toward me, but she quickly tamped it down. “I really couldn’t answer that,” she began, “but I think, given enough time, it will fill again.”
“Can you promise me that?” I asked playfully.
“The only thing I can promise is that we will do our best to make sure you have a chance at having that happen.”
“Would you come back and talk to me about it? I’m lonely as hell in here.”
“Not too lonely by the looks of all these flowers.”
“Flowers without roots.”
She laughed despite herself. “I’ll try. I have to go now.” She turned to leave.
“Doctor,” I whispered, “I’d really like to speak to someone who laughs like you.”
Her walk hesitated for a beat, but only a beat, before she was with her group again and gone. Dr. Murakami-Roth was on her name tag. It seemed like a good combination to me, but I knew she wouldn’t come back again, and not because she didn’t want to.

pages 71-72

© 2015 Norman Savage

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

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

SHE ASKED ME

to write her
a poem.
Ice,
I said,
warms
my winter
nights.
She leaned
back
on my couch
and opened
a button.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

I LOVE TO FLIRT

The Betty Poems

with words;
I love the danger
they create
on the page
over the distance
from body to body;
how they bring souls
nearer and reconcile
two people's suffering.
How even wisps
of sounds
internal
are brought
to their brassy
din while worldly
dins become
whispers
and all
but disappear.

They have served me
no better
than bringing me
you.
We've enjoyed
our word play
and have enjoyed
our bodies odyssey.
Our words have been spit
at each other; they've snarled
with fear and contempt
and righteousness; they've pulled us
from each other's orbit
and fastened each other's steel;
they've probed and retreated,
parried and thrust,
hidden and revealed,
they've grown fat
with complacency
and corroded
with fear; they've hidden
from their own meaning
and grew confused
by their own puzzle.
Yet,
they've endured.
They've healed
and mended,
licked clean
the wounds,
and salved
those tired muscles
that have been
on high alert
from birth.

I've never had
a better year
of my own making.
I've never fought harder
to make the words mean
what I wanted them to
without trying to make
myself safer.

I've never said,
I love you, Betty,
out loud
when no one's
around--
listen.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014