DETECTIVE JOE FRIDAY

it was winter
and distances
that kept us together,
in the cold and opague night,
dreaming of each others bodies
and the slow restlessness
of spring;

spring
with no youth
attached
and dense mists
covering the space
where the afternoon was; two bodies
somewhere near,
afraid of the yellow fog.

II

can you
understand? that I need people
and poetry--all things
that intrude? can you?
understand? what I don't
tell you?

morning
mechanics
rise
like a sleepwalker
to decay a little more.
meticulously folding my dreams
and romance into a locked drawer
fearful they spill into hands already
wet with nightmares.

III

a song sung in hot summer
confuses the chill that winter
predicts and dismisses what's between:
a waste
of words.
stopping as if to look
with disgust (even hatred!)
at myself and you!
for believing
all the wrong reasons.

deadly,
silent
walls, empty
hands without
hands, or even
rings, and the confusing
one-sided glass add
to time's disorder
which is also
yours.
and now frost
inhabits a mouth
which once
lured bees.
I've become afraid
of mysteries
too easily solved.
I watch it grow dark
around you and barely notice
the sun's replacement; only
the word, "love" twisting,
like a political promise, hardly
heard in the dusty white night.
"love,"
you said,
"me," (and took a step
backward; away
from the light, away
from the love.) no step
can trace this insane dance;

there isn't even a dance.

(a familiar state
this aloneness, in which everything
is fuckable; (a curse
this emotion.)

alone, now,
knowing that somewhere,
out there,
struggles are going on:
the sun's shove;
the surf's assault;
even the air pushing
against my skin--and I think:
life,
a sack of eggs
dropping
ever
so
slowly.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 1974