BEING IN LOVE IS FUCKED-UP

The Betty Poems

more so at sixty-five
than at fifteen,
especially when it's
your first time
really feeling
that sort
of craziness.
It shouldn't happen,
you say,
to yourself;
those molecules
that did a St. Vitas dance
should have long ago
rested their weary legs;
those adolescent agonies
should have given way
to a complicity
with the bodies
betrayal
and the beckoning
of the grave.

But no.

Your paranoia
does pirouettes
in your brain:
where is she,
who's she with,
who's she fucking.
Your heart
is halved
by her absence.
Your soul
scratches
against the nothing
inside it and
the nothing
outside.
And all the while
you're exhilarated,
and off balance;
you're a compendium of want
textured by grief
and longing; a language
you haven't heard
and can't learn
because all the books
that taught it
have been burned
and there's no more
pulp except
inside your three remaining
teeth and your dentist
wants to fuck her
too.

This is serious
if I want to stay alive.
I cannot concentrate
on much of anything
except her. I'm sure
she knows that
and turns the screws.
The pain
is pleasurable. She knows
that too.
Fuck her.
Fuck me.
And
while we're at it:
Fuck you, too.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013