SHE'S A FOOL

The Betty Poems

for cupcakes,
especially
the icing; she's weak
for coconut.
She favors
non-fiction,
the more morbid
the better:
concentration camps,
abject suffering,
alcoholism,
hopelessness.
But there must be
a tiny tiny light
of redemption.
One of her organs
is dead.
It died
when mine did
a decade earlier.
She fears nothing
except being second
to her lover's love.
She's fierce,
ferocious really
in her objections,
appetites,
desires
and refusal
to let go
of slights
and slippage.
When she smiles
her youth
is there
in all its vulnerability
and trust
despite herself; she
is always on guard
and fails
for good reason; pain
has always breathed with her,
beside her,
through her.
I've been fortunate
to witness fountains
of love
come out of her
secret places
I'll never know
and puddle
in the palms
of my hands.

Yet,
she's a motherfucker:
too smart,
too deep,
too complex
for me
to matter.

And that's
unfortunate--
for both of us.
Nothing to do
except
bury the bad
with the bones
and remember
everything else--
and that's enough.

It has to be.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013