SHADOWS MADE FROM ASH

A moon-sized orange pumpkin
exploded in the sky,
close enough
so the force
and the heat
knocked me back
against the steel
hip-hop high school doors.
I was a counselor then,
trying to get the kids
to do what I couldn't--
not get high.
I was outside
after the first blast
made me curious enough
to find out
what was what.
The school was in the shadow
of The Brooklyn Bridge,
Manhattan side,
adjacent to One PP.
I watched the plume
of black charcoal smoke
obey the wind
and gravity
and wonder
along with my Spanish thief colleague,
some kids and other teachers,
what the hell happened?
Small aircraft,
one cop said;
some kind of internal combustion,
another blue badge muttered.
I was listening, but watching
the arc of the second
plane, making what looked
like a lazy U-turn
into the second tower.

We got the kids out,
and waited for the ones with deformities
to be picked-up and brought out without
much more trauma.
The cops
like Border Collies,
herded us up,
and funneled us North.
It was a pilgrimage
painted by Goya
during his "Black" period.
No one spoke;
no one looked at the other,
until a man shuffling beside me said,
the second tower fell.
Fell where,
I wondered.

Luckily,
I didn't live far
from the inferno.
I rounded my block
twenty-five minutes later
and saw the face
of my young Japanese wife
waiting for me downstairs
in the street
with many others.
Her face ghostly,
her fingers nervous,
to touch my face, arm,
chest, back, hair, anything
and everything
that wasn't ash
and shadow.
She'd seen many like me
imprinted into the sides of buildings
and concrete isles in her city,
Nagasaki.
For me it was merely shocking;
for her it was coded
into her DNA.
She told me
she had to donate blood
immediately and asked
to go to the nearest hospital,
St. Vincent's. I pretty much knew
it would be useless,
but didn't tell her that,
couldn't tell her that,
her eyes told me
not to tell her that,
so instead stood with her
on a line and was
never called.
There were no bodies;
they'd been vaporized.
All too human one minute,
ashes the next.
She tried again and again
for the next three days
then gave it up.
Before she'd leave our pad
she stuffed four kinds of documentation
into her bag in case she'd get merely dead,
not disappear.
If nothing else she thought
her mother should know.

The smell of wet ash,
flesh and fire and paper
and steel smoldering strong
and acrid stayed in the air
and our lungs for quite some time.
Peoples lives, those who still lived,
crumbled with the towers, too,
leaving a wide scar
across the breath of a goddamn
tough city. But no matter
how hard and tough you are
shit like that just embeds
itself and becomes your partner
silent or otherwise
and takes the space
it wants.

Forget the memorials
and forego the bullshit speeches.
Just the date is enough.
Let the ones who were not there,
who came and will come after me
be wise
to cheap sentiment.
My wife and I
survived the towers,
but our marriage couldn't survive
my self-destructive
nature; two years later
it fell, too.
We've both rebuilt
our lives without
each other
knowing it,
but our bones remain
attuned, to what
undoubtedly
is coming
our way.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

SICK KIDS

It's funny
how you find
each other
at different times
through the years
and then are glued,
without realizing it,
by certain deformities:
a blind eye,
tear-ducts
that are dried
from a careless shot
of penicillin when a child,
a bum leg, a hairlip,
a stutter,
diabetes, violent
parentage, a murmur
of the heart...
All of us found a way
to compensate:
a humor both ribald
and profane, a cleverness
outwitting death;
an alchemist's brew
to survive...and luck
in a shot glass
a syringe
or another outlet
of depravity...
Over half a century
tiptoeing or shouldering through
we thought
we knew
the terrain; once again
we were fooled because
deep down
we chose
to remain
fools. And that's alright.
Some of those friends
are famous
and some quite rich.
I am neither,
but still known
to a very small
and I'd imagine
shrinking circle.

One woman
who is well known
in literary and artistic
battlefields called
with a request:
for a few hours
over a weekend
meet her
at a hospital
that drips with cancer
and death and read
some stuff
to some of the kids
on the runway waiting
for a takeoff
that hopefully
will be aborted.
(How we still love
to be read to).
A few years back
when asked to do that,
I asked for the teenagers,
knowing next to nothing
about children.
I was given the same age,
but different faces.

The kids were either wheeled in,
or came attached to mobile I.V.'s,
hooked-up to oxygen tubes and masks,
or shuffled in and plopped down from radiation,
eyes red and vacant, bone tired
at thirteen into the first available chair or couch.
There was a constant drip-drop
dripping yellowish fluid in their arms,
or necks.
"Stop Staring At My Tits, Mister," I read first
to wake them the fuck up, by Bukowski. Some grinned,
others smiled, still others laughed
out loud. Sometimes you need permission
to laugh. To laugh at yourself
and laugh at death. Laughing fucks
with death. It makes death
crazy. Teases it with life.
I followed with a few more by Buk
and finished it with a few by Selby;
"A Little Respect," being the last.
I was a facilitator, a conductor.
I can't say for sure,
but I felt better than those kids felt
afterwards and they seemed to feel quite good.

We all went afterwards
to the famous man's restaurant
in the West Village. Attention
was paid to us--actually
to them. I knew I was an appendage
and that was O.K., too.
We talked about everything
except the kids: Cannes,
Vegas, who's fucking who,
who's old, over the hill
and demented and who's
just demented; who's a real artist
and who's a fake; who's washed-up,
strung-up strung-out hung-up hung-out
and dried--the usual shit.
But today, though,
we did not get to the uselessness
of "art." We simply
didn't need
to go there.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

WE FINALLY COME TOGETHER IN THE REVERIE OF LOVE

burnt rubber; masks. a dog.
frozen.
in his best
dog-like
death.
flesh OR steel (!)
blood
(and cylinders).
lungs, pistons.
arteries.
and a
broken
fuel pump.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

ONE FOR DIANA NYAD...(AND ME)

She gave me courage...
and motivation.
She infused me
with the desire
to go on,
to persevere,
to surmount
all obstacles
including my own
biology.
I'm a year older
than she,
sicker
I would think,
and not as
wise.
But I was determined.
This morning,
a day after
her feat,
of swimming
from Cuba
to Key West,
amid jelly fish
and sharks,
blistering sun,
and memories,
in just fifty-four hours,
I stepped into
my shower
and whacked-off.
I did it
before the water
turned cold
which I knew
it would
in five to six hours
adding
more pressure.
Keep going,
keep going,
keep going.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

DESPITE EVERYTHING

The Betty Poems

we've done
and said
to each other--
all the pain
we've inflicted,
all the mis
communication,
we would like
nothing better
than the "other"
show-up
unannounced
on our doorstep
and take us--
as crippled
inconsistent
and damaged
as we are
into our hearts
like our birth
givers should have
but never
did.
It is an act
that punishes
speech
and which we know
will never happen.
Which is why
we will
settle
for nothing
less.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

COMMITTING THE CARDINAL SIN

I don't know about
anywhere else, but in Brooklyn
(and later New York City),
when two or more guys
got together
to bullshit--
whether on street corners
or saloons,
in upscale restaurants
or diners,
penthouses
or jails late
at night
or early in the mornings
--pussy would eventually
be the subject
you got to
and stayed on.
You could begin
with global politics
or local sports,
social utopias
or communism
as opposed
to capitalism,
famine in Africa
or the metaphysics of souls,
sooner or later
the cunt
would have to be discussed
in great detail
and tried to make
intelligible.
Rarely
would it be about
how a relationship worked
but how and why it didn't.
The talk would sometimes
be personalized,
but most of the time
it was the gossip
about those we knew
(past and present)
who weren't there
with us then.
Most of the anecdotes
were funny, sometimes
hilarious; enough
to make our stomachs ache
and our eyes water.
But sometimes they were
"Fatal Attraction"
"Play Misty For Me" tales.
We always let the teller
tell--the better the teller
the better the tale--
only interrupting with a
"what happened next, c'mon
tell us,"
like children being read to,
like we couldn't wait
to turn a page.
When it was finished
we glanced at
whoever else was there
speechless
until someone said,
"you know dontcha
never go out with anyone
who's crazier than you?
Never."
But since
I was usually the one
either telling the tale
or reciting the admonition
I never believed
it would apply
to me.

Until it did.

I had one like that once
and I would have gladly
given her
my money,
but there was none
to give; instead
she bit off
huge chunks
of my soul
and stripped me
of the little dignity
I had.
Ate me up,
spit me out.
Did with me
what she wanted
when she wanted
how she wanted.
The only thing
that saved me
was geography
and selfishness. Hers.
And the only reason
you're reading this
now, is her grace
and limitations.
Of course,
I vowed
I'd never allow that
to happen again,
but I hope I would.
In fact,
I thank her,
and think
we should all thank her,
for that.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013

A YOUNG WHORE

walks by
and sees me--
an easy mark;
a man
who would mistake
touch for love;
a mouth, a cunt
for invitation.
She sits
in the empty wrought-iron chair
beside me, but not
before asking:
Do you mind?
Feel free, I respond.

Neither of us
have much of a mind
on this hot and humid day
and neither of us
mistake what we have
as freedom.

Let the games begin.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013