RIMBAUD PHONES ME ON A SLOW NIGHT

at two a.m.--
never a good sign
--and says,
"fuck poetry,
I ain't no kid anymore;
gonna run guns
to Ethiopia.
Why don't ya join me?"
(Fucking "call waiting" I mutter).
I'm on the phone
with Poe,
I tell him.
"Fuck him, man,
he's still hung-up
on that Lenore chick."
Which was true,
but I ain't gonna tell
Poe that. Besides,
I've got a few ghosts myself.
I'll call ya back, I sez,
but knew I wouldn't cuz
he'd just romance me
and I never could stand that.
And just when I was gonna tell Edgar
to can it, forget about her,
Baudelaire barges in
with a bottle of green,
loaded, telling me our cocks
were really hands
on a clock's dials and time
was shit anyway.
I gulp a shot down
and forget about Edgar
and we tumble into
each other and hope Verlaine
doesn't show, but he does,
and wants to nibble our ears,
but Charlie wouldn't let him,
and I tell him to call Rimbaud back
but after he said that that crazy sonofabitch shot him
I gave him a drink and thought about taking the phone
off the hook but had another drink myself and Charlie
started reading Spleen to us and our eyes bugged
and in she walked...
parting the curtains
with that hip of hers,
knifing it, all beads
and black panties
and a stamp collector's
bag in the palm of her hand...uptown dope
she whispered
and slipped a nail
under its lip.

It takes a special woman
to have men forget who
is crazy and who
they are and listen
to music from other
rooms.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016