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

DIAPHANOUS VEILS BLOW FOUL & ILL WINDS, ON AN OTHERWISE BEAUTIFUL DAY

I'm taking them down.
Deleting them.
I've heard
The Greek chorus:
"Sometimes
second thoughts
are best."
Besides--
no longer
is there a point to prove.
A puppeteer needs
a puppet
made of wood
or old socks,
has buttons
for eyes
or straw
for innards,
not something
that really does
breathe.
Knowing how
I've danced
on the end
of your strings
has made me sick
to my stomach.
I'd like revenge
but not this way.
To see your mania
& feel your unease
brought a smile
to my face
while my soul,
the little I have left,
shriveled & wept.

If the work
as a whole
ever gets held
between covers--
be it
by my hand
or others--
OK.
But doing it
this way
is cheating.
It lessens
not who we are--
because we never
were much--
but something
more important:
the craft
of turning
the shit
of living
into smaller,
more digestible,
bite sized
end products
we so conveniently
call "art."

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

THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS...

In 1959
a bottle
of insulin
was two dollars and thirty-nine cents,
and now it's three,
three hundred, that is. Same bottle,
probably the same pig pancreas.
Back then the cashiers in pharmacy's,
grocery stores, deli's, movie theaters,
streetcars, gas stations,
knew how to make change
without being told
by a computer program.
You could find a pad, mid-sixties,
in NYC for less than a hundred a month
instead of four thousand: same water,
same heat, same crummy landlord; I could
go to Gerdes and listen to Van Ronk,
Oaks, Dylan, Farina & Baez or Trane or Max
or Sonny or Cecil or Miles for less than five
& still have enough for a shot and a beer
or a nickel bag of good reefer.
Gas was 39 cents a gallon, The Fillmore a few bucks,
and a vegetable cream cheese and butter bagel
with a cup of coffee was a dollar
at Ratner's when the night (& the reefer) demanded food
to go on.

It seemed you had to work
for your pleasures back then:
you couldn't give your money
to some dope dealer and hoped he'd come back,
or call a number and have it delivered--you
had to get it yourself
if you didn't want to get beat; you had to read
a whole book or article or the liner notes
of albums and not give a shit whether a million other assholes
liked it or not before
you took a chance.
Screens were
for movie theaters;
there were only certain things
you held in your hand:
someone else's hand,
or heart/your heart,
or your dick.

I don't know
if it's better
or worse now; each
his own, as they say.
I do know there is less
of me
to complain
& to kill.
The rest of you
I leave
to weave
memories
of your own--
good of me
I know.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

JULY 5TH, 1995--ICU--THE TROUBLE WITH DREAMS

The subzero cold woke me. I must be on the tundra, I thought. My eyes tried to see what they could--it wasn’t much, for every time I tried to inch my way up the pain was so excruciating it forced me back down again. However, I was able to see the same breathing tube coming out of my mouth, the same or similar wires leading from my chest to machines somewhere behind the bed, and the same I.V. lines going into a pole behind me from which hung bags of various fluids going into my arms. I also heard the slow, mechanical “beeps” from the various monitors in the room. I knew from the rhythm of them that I wasn’t alone.
A nurse came over to take my blood pressure. She wrapped the cuff around my arm and began to pump. “I’m cold,” I said, but the words came out so muffled it sounded like I was talking under water. I couldn’t be sure she heard me. “I’m cold,” I repeated. She looked at me and smiled. A moment later she brought back a thin blanket and put it on top of me. It barely helped, but it helped enough to bring back some warmth and feeling into my body.
My chest, or I should say the skin covering my chest, felt strange, like something was pulling halves of my flesh together. Slowly, I ran one of my hands, careful not to disturb the I.V.’s in my wrist, over the blanket. Each small movement tugged slightly at the needles tightly taped there, but I needed to know what, if anything, was causing the sensation I felt. Lightly, I brushed my fingertips up and down the middle of my chest and felt these protruding objects which ran from just underneath my neck to just below my breastbone. What the hell was this and why does my right calf and leg have almost the same feeling, this pulling?
In ten minutes the nurse was back to again take my pressure. I motioned as best I could to my chest and leg and turned my palm over.
“Oh,” she said, once comprehending what I meant, “they’re staples, that’s all. After the operation they put staples where they opened your chest and some in your leg, where they grafted a vein. It’s O.K., don’t worry.”
“Staples?” “Vein?” “Don’t worry?” What was she, out of her fucking mind?
There wasn’t very much for me to do in the I.C.U. except wait for my next shot of whatever pain killer they were giving me, and testing the threshold of pain I could tolerate by breathing in as deeply as I could until I could go no further. Thirty minutes before my next shot was due, my mind and body would begin to gear up. After the shot, I’d drift for the next few hours.
Out of one of these dream states I saw Diliberto standing by the foot of my bed, checking my chart. He must have felt me looking at him. “So far, so good,” he said. “How’re you doing?” I was able to nod my head, and roll my eyes a little bit. “Typical,” he said, with a hint of humor in his voice, “let’s have a listen.” He came around my bed and sat down on the edge of it, and, with stethoscope in hand, began to listen to my heart. It was then that I saw, for the first time, what had to be the staples running up and down my chest with a piece of surgical tape over them. He saw how I looked at them. “They call it a zipper; you have a zipper now.”
“Can I piss through it?” I mumbled through the tube.
Unlike the nurse, he had no trouble hearing me. “Being funny, that’s a good sign. Charlie, I’d like to listen from the back. I know it’s going to be painful, but I want you to sit up. I’ll help you.” He stood up and grabbed me by the shoulders. When he started to pull me forward I made an attempt to aid this maneuver, but the pain was so intense I thought I was going to die. I took one of my arms and hugged him. “You’re doing fine, just a little more. Yes. Good. I need you to hold that position for a few seconds.” He put the stethoscope to my back and listened. The rounded, cold steel, actually felt good. After he had heard what he needed to, he gently lowered me back down, which was no picnic either, but at least I was going down. “Sounds very good. Another day or two in here and we’ll move you back to your room.”
“Nick,” I mumbled, “am I...” I couldn’t get the rest of the words out; so much for my if I die, I die, bullshit.
“You are. I did too much work on you for you to do anything but live. At first I thought only three arteries were blocked, but after we opened you up, we found four. You had a quadruple, Charlie. A Home Run. A four bagger. About seven hours on the table, we worked.”
I leaned my head back on the pillow and felt the heat of tears come into my eyes. This time he did nothing to stem the flow of them. He patted my foot but then, as he was turning to leave he stopped, held my foot in his large and warm hand and said, “You’re going to live, Charlie. Can’t say how long, but your odds are no better or worse than any other poor sonofabitch who’s been walking around with diabetes for over fifty years. Quite extraordinary you made it this far, with the lifestyle you led, but you did. Now, I’d like you to try and do the hardest thing you never had the courage to do: be good to yourself.”
“Thank you...and fuck you,” I said to him, as he put his hand on the knob.
“Don’t mention it, Charlie. Anytime, Charlie, anytime at all.”
And with that, he was gone.

From: THE TROUBLE WITH DREAMS, 2007

© 2015 Norman Savage

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

LET FREEDOM RING

The body ages
while time speeds:
older?/faster.
God is good--
to some of us.
Red roses
are bored.
They have
only one
destiny.
The sun
comes out
between drops.
And we?
we were so sure
of our place
in the world
yesterday--
now?
not so much.

I write
what won't
be read
except
by a special few--
the few
who are
alone & reach
for meaning;
the few
who will
hear the explosions
from inside
their fears;
the few who've
never understood
their fellow humans
but have made it
through
anyway.

Tonight
a pilgrimage
is made
by millions
to see the fireworks.
New York City puts on
quite a show
despite the warnings
from tribal hands
whose pleasures
serve ancient deities.
Not to worry, we're told,
our God is younger, hipper,
better. Who am I
to argue?

I walk slower,
but go quicker.
There's wisdom
in just that.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

JULY 3, 1995

CHAPTER V

The July 3rd sun burned through her bare windows like it was filtered through a magnifying glass. I looked at my hand expecting to see smoke rising from it. Lilith was sleeping; her mouth was open like she was expecting to catch flies.
What went on for the remainder of last evening, I couldn’t tell you with much clarity. We must have hit two or three saloons before pressing the elevator button in her building and stumbling into her pad. The last thing I do remember is her saying that this was the tail end of her period to which I responded that it didn’t mean anything to me. And then I was down there. And then I woke up thinking that my hand was on fire.
She had a wonderful shower, the water, strong and hot. It came at me from six different directions. Her bathroom contained all the fabulous and sensual odors that women, even women of much more moderate means, had, but her means bordered on the extravagant. I used notions on my hair and body that I’d never heard of before just because I’d never heard of them. By the time I stepped out of the shower--smelling like an expensive French whore--I noticed an intense smell of bacon, intermingled with coffee, coming from another part of her pad.
“Are you almost finished?” she hollered.
“Almost. With all the shit you have in here I don’t know whether to douche or not?”
I heard the sound of her laughing. “How do you like your eggs?”
“Scrambled, soft.”
The apartment filled with a string quartet by Beethoven, an early one full of youth and promise.
“I put a robe on the bed for you.”
“Thanks,” I hollered back, and went into the bedroom where a thick, deep blue, terry-cloth bathrobe lay. It was incredibly soft on my skin and, from the look and feel of it, nearly new. I felt like a bit of schmuck wearing it, but walked toward her voice nonetheless.
Lilith heard me padding in from the bedroom and turned toward me, spatula in hand. “What a night, what a night. My god, you got me absolutely crazy!” She came over and gave me a kiss, forcing my mouth open so her tongue could find mine. She stepped back to administer to the eggs.
“Sit down,” she said, “make yourself comfortable. It’ll be ready in just a sec.”
I turned to pull out a chair from a long rectangular oak table like something you’d see in a magazine devoted to French Country furniture. It was then that I saw it hanging on the wall. It was jarring. An oil painting of her face, almost seven feet by six feet, challenged the viewer to engage the beast. Well, I’ve engaged the beast more than once in my lifetime and here was another one, a live one, as fearsome looking as any and all of them ever were.
It was Gorky’s mother; it was Neptune devouring his children; it would have made the steely spine of a burglar, unaware of its presence beforehand, choose a different pad to ransack. Her face, almost the size of the canvas, in three-quarter view, was as severe as any monomaniacal persona I’d ever seen. Her deep, brown eyes were positioned so well that her concentration never wavered between what she saw, how she interpreted it, and her defiance, denying the viewer access to anything but fearsomeness within and outside her skull. Her skin, while luminescent looking, had a sickly shade of barely discernible yellow running through it. But it was her mouth, specifically her two front teeth, that gave me the most pause. Though her lips were thin and tight, it bared her teeth in perfect form except for those front two. It was almost as if the white enamel a dentist uses to bond a tooth had slipped while applying it, spreading the white film onto the next front tooth. The sloppiness which this presented was left as was, giving the impression that those two teeth were actually one very large, very strong, and very lethal weapon, or desire.
“My ex painted that,” she explained nonchalantly.
“He did, huh? Well that clears it up. I thought at first it might have been someone whose family you destroyed, perhaps eaten.”
“Yes, not very flattering, I must admit, but he is--was--a very good artist. I don’t know what he’s doing now with his new girlfriend.”
“Let’s hope it has nothing to do with small children or animals.”
“He’s a wonderful father to Hubert,” she said quickly.
“Oh, I believe he is. I was only kidding about that. It was a bad joke,” I replied, then asked, “Hubert? Who’s Hubert? I thought you had a daughter?”
“Hubert’s a she. I took the name from my father who’d recently died and gave it to her.”
“I see,” I said, but didn’t.
“I know, I know, I know, it’s kind of weird, but we all got used to it, including Hubert.”
“Well, I’m happy about that.”
“I nursed my father all during his illness, (my mother never could be there for anyone), and I just couldn’t let him go. Keeping his name alive might be the best gift I could give him.”
The bacon hissed and spat grease from the pan it was frying in. She lowered the flame, waited for a second and shut it off, putting the bacon on some toweling paper nearby. Then she poured the eggs into the same frying pan, stirring them ever so gently. She came over to me carrying a whole decanter of coffee, large cup, and some milk and placed them near me. She glanced at the painting of her.
“He really is a wonderful father,” she said again, “I really don’t know why I hung that painting. He painted so many portraits of me that are so much better; it’s a mystery why I decided to hang that one.” She turned and went back into the kitchen.
I thought for a moment, then thought better of it. “Let’s eat, baby, I’m starved. You must have depleted my entire system last night.”
“And you, me, my dear,” she said as she placed the food before me. “The bacon is from Dean & DeLuca. The butcher told me they get it from a farm in Wisconsin. It’s supposed to be the best there is.”
“Smells delicious,” I said, and took a bite. “Tastes delicious, too. Where are the eggs from?”
“D’Agostino’s.”
“Just kidding, baby, just kidding.”
We greedily ate our food, prompted as much by our bodies need for replenishment as for the taste of the food itself.
“I’ve got something you might really like for later,” she said, with just the right amount of promise in her voice.
“Oh, yeah, what might that be?”
“A bottle of Grand Marnier that’s one hundred and fifty years old. Very few are allowed to be sold in any given year.”
“I can imagine. I don’t think I’ve ever drank anything that was older than me,” I chuckled, “just to be crude, how much does something like that cost?”
“Don’t ask, just enjoy.”
I looked at her with a mixture of curiosity and dread. “Pass the butter, would ya?” I said, and turned my attention to the bread gotten, I was sure, from a Sicilian grandmother in Sicily and flown in just for our morning’s enjoyment.

...

From: THE TROUBLE WITH DREAMS
© 2015 Norman Savage

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015