ONE OF THE ONES

who I made room for,
rearranged the furniture,
put on a new coat of paint.
I had to,
so much was I drawn
to her scent,
and her eyes,
brown & flecked with greens,
so much was I drawn
into her cunt
& the ways
of enchantment.
She rouged her nipples
& perfumed her body.
In the dead
of winter fucked me
in a suicide ward
propped against
my bathroom door.
We had drinks with Mailer,
in Provincetown on a frigid February night
as he tried to make her
& she demured but refused me entry
later in our wooden motel
near the sand dunes.
Angrily, I fucked her
in the ass, her submission
a false delicacy
as we tumbled
into arguments
about poetry
and maturity
and reality
and other
insolvables.
I would wait
on the streets
where I knew she walked
and ran into her
by accident
and we'd pick it up
again.
She found me
at St. Mark's Church
waiting on a Bukowski reading
and coaxed me
into the balcony
& took me in her mouth
while he read below.
We were in & out
of each other's blood
for decades.
And still are.
Both in our seventies
and not yet ready
to call it a day.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018

I'VE GOT

the sad sad s,
the black twerlies,
the "everything tastes like shit"
blues. I think I'll put on
Sonny Boy
or read Hank.
I'll listen to slaves
sing and inhale
tobacco smoke
writers and follow
blind seers
and soothsayers.
And I'll drink,
yes, I'll drink
from them
and to them.
For you see
I know
what to do:
I've been black
and blue
before.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013