KISSING THE FATES

I know this babe
who's in prison.
I write her
nearly every day
both for amusement
& salvation.
I've offered,
sometimes,
a key--
but that
has proved
to be
a problem:
How does one accept
a key from
your jailor?
Both of us,
it seems,
are fated
to do
the maximum.
Let us kiss
those fates
with abandon.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

YOU KNOW

Dominican girls
are the best
kissers? she said,
like everyone,
including me,
was supposed to know that.
Yeah, I said,
I know it--
I fell
into this girl's lips
one time in Miami,
and still remember it;
can still
taste it, like
a warm pool
of honey.
Well,
I'm better,
she stated
simply,
assuredly; I'm older,
I've got...ways.

She let the word
dangle--
like the rest of me
was doing...

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016