ON WRITING: IN THE STRETCH

You've lived
with something
for almost
eight years.
You've loved it,
fought with it,
caressed it,
kissed it,
abandoned it...and
came back to it.
You can't leave it
because
it never left you.

You've aborted
six months of work,
a hundred and fifty pages,
once and nearly a hundred
again; you've played,
at first
with first
person,
then third,then
back to first.
You've made notes
on little scraps
of paper &
on the palm
of your hand;
you've played
in the stream
& of the stream,
you thought
a door opened
and saw it get shut
in your face.
It wanted nothing
to do with you.
It only made you
love it more.

No doubt
my love
of pain
held me
there.
I found that true
for other lovers
as well.
No doubt
there is something
to be said
for isolation
& all the pain
& pleasure
that brings.
There are those
who think
that we writers
are something
special--and we writers
would have to
agree. The truth is
that we're sonsofbitches,
cocksuckers, leeches,
and lovers of pleasures
that have nothing to do
with pleasures
of a more pedestrian
nature. We want
our cake
our fork
our slice
and our fix
and we don't
want to pay
for it in coin,
but in blood.

Now, when I can see
the end of this
I am more miserable.
It means, that soon,
I have to go
amongst you
again. Gimme
a smoke.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015