ONE FOR THE OL' COWBOY, GENE AUTRY

The Betty Poems

We'd not spoken
nor written
to each other
for a month,
maybe more.
I'd hung-up
on her twice
and didn't respond
to her emails--
except once
by mistake
when I hit
the wrong button.
(That happens,
I've learned,
even to the best of us).
I kept posting poems
about her--
that I did do,
--and other matters
less important
to me
but important
nevertheless.

It was hell.

But I've lived in hell
in one form or another
all my life.

But this hell
was special.

After she returned
from a week's respite
without me
where she could drink
and smoke in illusions
of her own making
(and perhaps getting close
to a body or two? who knows?
and who could blame her?)
she wrote
to me.
She'd read my poetry,
only sometimes (she was quick to note)
and wrote it had Bukowski's imprint
all over it,
with some of my own, smaller,
fingerprints, too.
(She was good
with the backhand,
real good).
I'm sure she thought
I'd be flattered,
pleased knowing what I owed
to the great poet,
but lesser man. True
for all of us
poets. But perhaps
she really knew
something else: we owe
something to everyone
who came before us
even the bad ones,
especially the bad ones.
But deep down
really deep down
she knew that anger is lit
before the match is seen
or the sulfa inhaled;
she knew I couldn't help
but respond--which
I couldn't.
Savage is Savage
and other declarations
of horseshit
lept to mind
from gut.
And she responded.
And I responded.
And she responded.
And I...

We were
"back in the saddle
again." The world
is back
on its
axis. And I
can breathe
again.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013