YES MOMMY, OF COURSE, DADDY

always followed
by the silent
Fuck You
writ large
or small
once the lights
dimmed, the doors
closed, the mice
scurry and shadows
leave behind fears
like droppings
and your demons
romp.
Get out
the knife,
cut along
the perforation;
invert
the spike,
jiggle the vein,
ride the white horse,
purge the loving dinner,
slip your panties
off those frozen ankles.

How good
being bad
feels.

The gasoline
smells so good
each time
I fill the tank.
Almost as good
as the mimeograph
machine smelled
as I printed copies
of "Ode On A Grecian Urn"
for Miss Edelman's class
on a hot and pregnant day
sixty years ago
tomorrow imagining
my fingers fingering
her breast, my mouth
in her ear,
the ink still wet,
the pages moist,
I wept from excitement.

I sat next to
an old colored woman
on the crosstown bus.
She'd sowed a mean leopard print
onto her denim shirt
and had a leopard hat on her Sunday morning perm,
red nails, buffed, and red lipstick sitting proud
on her lips, I inhaled her
renegade blues walking up and down the aisle.
A hard-headed lover, and head turner,
stubborn, opinionated,
twisted with abandon,
we knew what stop
to get off
and off
we got.

Mommy,
I said.
Yes, Daddy,
whatchowantsugar?
Your sweet self,
I replied,
Come and get it.
The demons stood back
and let me go get near.

It was only Wednesday;
and I'm off tomorrow.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016