ONE FOR KOBE

I never liked the prick.
He was the proverbial dagger
in my heart, sticking it in,
and twisting, enjoying
how I bled out;
an assassin
killing this stupid Knick's heart
of mine
over
& over
& over
again.

But sometimes death
is a beautiful thing
to watch
even when its yours.
His Black Mamba wrist
flicking out
those jumpers
mesmerized flight
while you suffered
a death
from a thousand cuts.

Yet I have no explanation
for how I write this,
far exceeding
my expiration date,
being as heedless as I was
& as reckless as I am
to the dictates of the flesh
which houses me, thirty-two years
his senior with enough chronic illness
to slay most any man.
To think it's the writing of this poem
or the few more that come after
is even too much for my skewered heart
to believe--even though my fingers took flight
as they danced about the keys
in a rhythmic synch with those ballarinas
of thought pirouetting
inside my head.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2020