TWO NURSES, A TIGHT CLOSET, AND ME

positioned between them
the heat from their white purity
invading my pubescent hospital pajamas
flushing my cheeks
igniting my regions
as I Bobby Darined my way
through Mack the Knife.
1959 was the year,
diabetes the disease,
Brooklyn the place,
an all male hospital ward my home
of dreams, rock 'n roll,
& trouble
percolating like a virus gone wild
in a rapidly aging eleven year old body
finger snappin, pretending
I was both the singer
& the song.

After the fear
loosed its grip
& needles & shots & tubes
snaking from mouths & assholes & veins
to bottles hidden beneath beds
or crucified on poles
& strange & bearded men
lost their ghostliness,
my body regained its hum
and my little Panasonic its life.
She stood propped against the door,
in all her beauty, her starched white uniform
& pronged pointed hat atop her cornsilk hair
couldn't conceal a body wanting to explode
from its confinement, watching me
mouthing lyrics, snapping fingers,
and gyrating against the pillows
allowing Bobby's hipness to take me
to where I wasn't.
I couldn't have known
that everything we are
or was going to be
was held in a tune.

I caught her
watching & smiling
a smile that wasn't--
a smile meant for a lover,
a smile that wasn't cute
but coquettish; a smile
on a different highway
with a different destination.
She held her slim index finger
up in the air...soon she was back
with another nurse. Slowly
they came to my bedside
& she reached for my hand
& led me, on trembly legs
to a supply closet across the hall
where they pressed against me:
"Sing it again, baby," she coaxed me,
"just like before."
I began to stammer.
"It's OK, baby, sing it again,
just like before."
And just like that
I snapped my fingers, found the beat,
& the shark came out
to play.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

TO HAVE UNDERSTOOD

so little
at this age,
to be so late
in this life,
now strikes me
as funny.
The stumbles,
the missteps,
hitting
the ground
thinking:
I swear
the floor
was there.
Complexities
concocted
as the traffic
roared around
me. My breastbone
my blacktop's
white line; my thumb
up my ass.
Sometimes
the cars gave up
coming to a halt
and no matter how
many horns blared,
how many radiators
overheated, how much
steam rose from hoods,
they stayed
stuck. Fist fights
broke out
in my brain beating
each side
to a bloody pulp.

And now...
now it's all so simple:
I'm better
alone.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016