LET US PRAY

Sunday always feels
like some kind of Psalm
at the end of some kind
of brutality.
It needs
not to be studied
in ways that imply
interest,
but fear.

I will resist
hurting myself
today. I will
take another
into my
confidence.
I will trust
the Lord
& lean
not into
my own
understanding.
I will allow
Him
to direct
my paths.

But first
I have to
pee...
then I'll see
what's what.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

HOW WOMEN

open themselves
up
for you
has always
been
magical,
whether
to love
or
to kill
or to do
both
is nature's
lubricant.
How subtle,
how nuanced,
how the wetness
glistens
on cherry-pink lips
thick
with flavor
of a million bees
gone mad with fruition.
How unlike men
they are,
tank-like men,
men coming
at them
with their steel treads
& beetle-like opinions.
Huffing & puffing
yet providing
the smell of domination
upon a fertile
but heretofore
barren
landscape.

How mismatched
they are,
and perfect.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

ENZYME/SUBSTRATE

The Betty Poems

There's only one key
to only one cunt, and one cunt
for only one key--your mission:
find it. Find it
and you'll never be the same.
Most fail.
Most fail miserably.
Some almost get it
but miss
by a hair.
Those that miss
feel it,
know it,
and call locksmiths,
change their diet,
stop smoking,
seek priests, rabbi's,
therapists, doctors, in all stripes
and persuasions; they think having
kids will help; they move
from house to house,
state to state, or become
Little League managers,
den mothers, or use
their next door neighbor's
ear...or spouse
and still
something
is missing.
Sometimes
we think
we're fucking the right person,
but we're not. The odds
are always against us.
The very young,
of course,
do not know this,
while the old
are usually too dead
to notice
or care.

To discover
the one
is almost as impossible
as imagining your parents fucking.
But that's where it began--the madness
of it all. Those crazy juices.
The twists. The turns, the unexpected
cliffs and the warning signs
you pretended not
to see.
A naked recording instrument, wet,
and over stimulated; composing
your own algorithms,
manufacturing a new code
for an ancient program.
Nothing is lost
to memory.
And then to stumble
on another
who knows your code
might require a lifetime
of broken bones and stitches
If there is victory
to be found
it will be bloody. You'll clean
yourself from your parent's sheets
and by-products; you'll walk
through the fire
of your fears.

Trust your cunt
and the way it blossoms
to the other's presence
before touch; trust
your cock and how it hardens
to her voice
despite age or reason.
Trust your body
that knows light years
before your brain
how the other
can know you so well
and not know you
at all. And how
when your secrets spill
from places
you were blind to
you allow your nakedness
to protect you
and keep you safe.
You'll want
to sabotage it,
destroy it,
rub shit into it,
disbelieve it,
but resist those urges
that run through your veins
like summer storms.

When it's found
(if it's found)
and you get it right
it's like magic:
you don't know how it happened,
you don't know how it's done,
and you don't give a fuck
either.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013