I LOVE TO FLIRT

The Betty Poems

with words;
I love the danger
they create
on the page
over the distance
from body to body;
how they bring souls
nearer and reconcile
two people's suffering.
How even wisps
of sounds
internal
are brought
to their brassy
din while worldly
dins become
whispers
and all
but disappear.

They have served me
no better
than bringing me
you.
We've enjoyed
our word play
and have enjoyed
our bodies odyssey.
Our words have been spit
at each other; they've snarled
with fear and contempt
and righteousness; they've pulled us
from each other's orbit
and fastened each other's steel;
they've probed and retreated,
parried and thrust,
hidden and revealed,
they've grown fat
with complacency
and corroded
with fear; they've hidden
from their own meaning
and grew confused
by their own puzzle.
Yet,
they've endured.
They've healed
and mended,
licked clean
the wounds,
and salved
those tired muscles
that have been
on high alert
from birth.

I've never had
a better year
of my own making.
I've never fought harder
to make the words mean
what I wanted them to
without trying to make
myself safer.

I've never said,
I love you, Betty,
out loud
when no one's
around--
listen.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014