GETTING STRAIGHT IN A WORLD OF CROOKED DREAMS

takes an awful amount of work--
and I should know.
For over half a century--off
and on--I've sought & found myself
in the white lady's embrace,
but it wasn't easy.
We junkies are said to be a lazy lot,
by those Mayflower noses
who sniff our detached delinquency
with disdain, but our lives spent
in pursuit of heavenly abstractions
belie that.

Pretty much,
it's a sunup to sundown gig:
You ain't got it, ya have ta get it;
ya get it, you have ta use it;
ya use it, ya have ta have more...
and more...
and more...
unless ya have money & connects up the ass,
but even then other predators lurk--
just ask Michael or Prince or Seymour.

Usually, we must go amidst the savages
before Morpheus is tightly tucked
in your pocket, or sock, or under the balls,
before we get to our sanctity
to take him out & play; before he curls
against our thirsty cells; before
we can feel alright & safe
in a world not of our own making,
we first need get out the bellows,
and anvil, and hammer to straighten
a steel pretzel soul into
its reptilian progenitor who then
can dial a number or slither out
to cop...and cure.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020