NO PROBLEM, BABY

The Betty Poems


I've been killing myself
for over half a century
with cigarettes--first Lucky Strike
because I was such a tough
motherfucker, and later
Marlboro after my lungs went
all insurrection on my ass.
I've enjoyed
every fucking drag
and the way those skinny tubular
merchants of pleasure
slid so easily,
like an inlaid pool cue
between my varnished index
and middle fingers.
They nursed me;
they comforted me;
they nourished me
when no other human could
or wanted to
through amputations,
a quadruple,
extractions,
laser eye bombardments,
talk therapy,
encounter groups,
more talk therapy,
dope addiction,
booze binges,
break ups make ups
isolation so monstrous
it made rats weep.
Despite admonitions
from doctors
and dealers
who prophesied
stumps for legs,
and tubes for air.
Past fog horns
moaning for its lost
sailors and past captains
diving into their wrecks.
Past men of the cloth
who knew only morbidities
of the spirit--
Past all
and nothing
I stood fast
and loyal...

Until you...

coming from the north,
from a gentler country
you were no less ruthless
and violent
and vicious
to yourself
and so knew me
well enough to know
that borders were cages
that brokered limits
and limits were cages
that brokered fears.
And after you curled
inside of me
listening to the agony
of breath, a pleading
inarticulateness you said,
Savage
(a more beautiful whisper
I've never heard),
you must,
we must stop
smoking so we can buy
(if it can be bought?)
more time
together.
No problem, baby
I replied.

Today
makes it a week.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013