PAIN HAS NEVER FELT THIS GOOD

I've been trying
for years now
to get away
from her
gravitational field;
I do not have
the propulsion
necessary
or, perhaps,
I lack
the will?
No matter
why; it is
what it is.
Everything I do
or don't do
I do
or don't do
with her
in mind.
It's madness
most beatific
in a wood dark
and winding.

There has been
explorations
of different planets,
different bodies,
different climates,
different names.
I've been indifferent
to their danger if,
indeed, they presented
danger at all.
Somewhere in my core
I must have known
that her madness
would arouse and inspire
my own and give rise
to a poetry of fevers.

It is the mirror
of adolescence
that I stare into.
A demon stares back:
young, heedless,
reckless (but alive!)
Pain has never felt
this good.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015

DESPITE EVERYTHING

The Betty Poems

we've done
and said
to each other--
all the pain
we've inflicted,
all the mis
communication,
we would like
nothing better
than the "other"
show-up
unannounced
on our doorstep
and take us--
as crippled
inconsistent
and damaged
as we are
into our hearts
like our birth
givers should have
but never
did.
It is an act
that punishes
speech
and which we know
will never happen.
Which is why
we will
settle
for nothing
less.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2013