I WON'T PAY FOR YOUR LOVE,

For P, a black cat prowling...

but I'll gladly pay for your book.
Some work
is too dear
while others are,
as they say,
"on the arm."

"Love," a miserable shape-shifter,
is maleable, wily, untrustworthy,
dangerous in its excess
& yet more so
in its absence;
it's unhinged, schized,
juiced with questions,
& arid of answers...
& always,
always, costs
much more than you ever thought.

While a book
no matter how twisty,
no matter how difficult,
is solid, its pages glued,
its letters made of concrete
spawns words which spawns sentences
which the eye can see & digest until
it makes sense
or doesn't; you're enriched
or you move on. But
in all accounts,
if the writer is serious,
you know that those words
were fought over, paid for,
in the only currancy art knows:
blood.

And so, my dear,
if I love you,
or you me--
that's our problem.
It's our Coney Island funhouse
or madhouse
or doghouse
of the mind.
But your book exists
outside that as yours,
your peculiar take
on this carnival,
as a testament
of a survival
outside the bounds
of a pedestrian matrimony;
an affirmation
in the boldest sense
of a life lived
despite the odds
of an early exit,
as revenge
for a life lived
without permission
accepting payment
like the grandest of hooker's acknowledgement
of just what a fantastic lover she is.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2019