INSIDE A WARM GRAY COCOON

listening to Trane
& Monk's Ruby,
My Dear
on a rainy New York
afternoon bending
into evening
allowing myself
to be soothed
by a love
that straddles time
& its infirmities.

Within the moist breath
of a whisper
I feel the hand
of my green-eyed lover
nestle into the small of my back
amid the smells of candy apples
& cotton candy on a steamy
Coney Island night.
Every once in awhile
she leans in
& kisses my neck.
A delicious shiver
wriggles inside me.
Mmm, I go.
I dare to cup her breast.
She does not
deny me.
We are coming from,
& on our way to
salvation.

We've come through
the briars
of adolescence,
but hold a rose
in each of our hands,
a red rose soft
but indestructible.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

A BEDTIME STORY

for Corinne

Your body's crease
is now steam-dried
and vacant;
all the waterlogged memories
have wept
and gone to another home.
Sand no longer dances
under your feet,
the sea sighs,
breathes, and
retreats.
All that's left
are yellowed and bent
snapshots and
the rubbed heads
of pencils.
Your womanhood,
a spiced stream
that made rivulets
through my sheets
is neutral,
boring,
dead.

I crunch on a piece of broken glass
with a new broken tooth, jagged,
and smile a demented smile
to myself.
All the spaces that stood
as background
to your form
and shadow,
your words,
that fitted silence
so well
are silenced--

Tonight the stars
are not important;
only the spaces
the dead ones leave
are.

Norman Savage
Coney Island, 1969