I'VE BEEN ON A TRANE RUN

For sensual junkies of all stripes...

for about a week now.
Things like this seem to happen to me--
have a taste of Haagan Dazs tonight
& a week later my mug is still buried
in a gallon; read a Bukowski poem
& a month later you can find me
nailed & waving to him
from the next cross.
From birth
I've been a heat-seeking guided missle
of pleasure; tickle a part of my brain
& I climb aboard
without thinking
of schedule or
destination. Let the driver
or conductor worry
about that. Besides,
I reason, they're getting paid
to get me where I'm going; I'm
just along for the ride.

Sure,
sometimes the trip
has been bumpy--
unscheduled stops
for hospitals
& rehabs, a love affair
or two that had me
missing my stop or
missing an organ,
but how are you going to tell a cannibal
that the flesh he's hungered for
might be necrotic?
He'll just laugh
& eat around the edges.

Sixty-one years ago
some tasty black spoonfuls
conjured a be-bop magic
in the alchemy of a white chef's
basement in Hackensack, New Jersey.
Today, April 12, 2019,
I'm feasting
on their labors
of love.
The Trane
endures & tastes
wonderful.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

For all junkies of the senses...

WHEN MY EX-WIFE WAS BORN

I was already in love
with another woman.
In fact,
I was crazy in love with her.
It moved pieces of me around.
But then,
junk took over,
and made the living
dead & the dead more real
than the living,
but the dead didn't dance
for decades--
until my ex
became my now
& now became new
& shiny.
But then,
the junk took over.
And darkness fell
on a soft
& useless
dick.
These women,
loves of my life,
were born three days
but twenty-six years
apart.
One was straight-laced New Jersey finishing school;
the other radical Japanese artist Nagasaki poor.
The common denominator
was me...
& poetry.
Always is.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2018