THERE IS NO GREATER THRILL

for a drug addict
than finding a drug
that you thought
had skipped out
on you.
Today,
it was a baby aspirin,
81 miligrams
in a tiny yellow Beyer dot
that helps thin my blood
in my heart holy clogged universe.
It was hiding
behind my coffee pot
and the thick black cord
connecting it
into the socket
behind that.
I had thought
I'd looked there yesterday
but musta missed it after
looking on the floor,
gas range and crack
between the icebox
& cleaning cabinet.
Shit, I'd said then,
and shook out
another pill.

It's not that I think
about medications
of all kinds
but obsess about them too.
If I wasn't taking drugs,
if I wasn't sick
who would I be?

Drugs have been my savior.
Drugs have been my confidant,
my muse, my benefactress and
my regulator; they've been the elixer
for this coward's blood:
They've gotten me up
in the morning & coaxed me into bed
at night giving me purpose
& dreams in this hellish game
of Truth or Consequences.

Soon, if I do everything right
or nothing at all, a door will open
on its own.
I've stashed Dramamine
every place I could think of
just in case.
Call me crazy
or call me Ishmael, I don't care.
But prepared
I will be.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

HIDE & SEEK

You put out shit
to hide shit.
You let yourself
be known
only to lower
the curtain.
You say what you mean
only because you know
how the self is fooled
by honesty.
It's almost
like finding
what felt like love
instead of
the fear
that was there
instead.

How will I know
who it is I am,
when the me
who finds me
is not the me
who went looking
in the first place?

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015