C'est Le Guerre

A million lips & words
& fingers & smells
& false starts;
a hundred thousand zippers
pulled
up & down
a half million times
with hairs caught
in steel teeth &
two million pimples
popped a half billion
fumbling & rumblings
& phones falling out
of their cradles
by silence & midnight
forays into forests
of motives & maybe
a urinary infection
or two beside a pregnancy
& cold linoleum abortions
decided in extremis...

& now
little
laughs,
but
safety.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017