THE LOVE OF LADIES

Joni trills
in the shower
while I play
in the days' news.
Coffee bounces
from sleepy beds
of conflict
& balm
as I smell her skin
being put on--
fragrant layers
like fronds
in our overheated
hothouse.

In the afternoon
while evening sleeps
so peacefully, I'll read
to Toni her words--
music in a white man's mouth
drunk on her rhythms turning
the heart's coal
into diamonds.

Tonight, there's Simone,
both Nina & deBeauvoir,
their acid tongues disrobing
my bourgeois notions
of all things man
and all matter, women.
How we might be glued
to this affair of living,
but the living need not
be less than joyful.

And then,
there is you--
a fugitive
from your body's embrace,
a renegade from your country's enclosure,
who I've loved all my life
without knowing not your name,
but your jouissance,
who I whisper to, who I pray to,
in the dark--
blue as the tangle of smoke
from a shared cigarette
as it rises in the moonlight,
as gentle as wisps,
from Miles' Spanish horn.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019

THE LOVE OF LADIES WHO BURN...SCALD...AND SCORCH

Joni sings
in the shower
while I play
in the damp news
of yesterday.
Coffee bounces
up from sleepy beds
of conflict
& balm
as her moist skin
exudes fragrance
like rare orchids
in an overheated
hothouse...

I'll read
to Toni
tonight
her own words
from the mouth
of a white man
drunk
on her rhythms
of the heart's coal
& diamonds...

There's Simone,
both Nina & deBeauvoir,
pointing with acid tongues
new tastes in extremes
of language glued
to the affairs of men
doomed & tragic
and forever
joyful...

& Billie
of course
turning & twisting love
around her tongue
until, even I,
can hear it
for the first time
again
& again
& again...

And then
there is
you.
The one
who hums
inside,
constant,
a metronome
of want;
the blue tangle
of legs
& after sex smoke
from cigarettes
drifting lazily,
as gentle as wisps
drawn from Miles' Spanish horn;
who I whisper to
in the dark embers
of the night.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017