tonight needs no introduction now our friendship is as fixed as sea meeting land
you and I are the five senses of surf –
seaweed rhythmic briny ebb-and-flow weighty
________
Onward (been there)
Upward (done that)
Downward (oh yeah)
Sideways (too often)
Backward (hardly ever)
Standing Still (way too often)
From Here (but which way?)
_________
“Make mine a double and I’ll tell you a story. Of friends who twice loved the same woman. Two different women that is. I mean to say loved different women twice. Christ, this tale’s off to a fine start. I’ll wait me whiskey and pause with this bit of wisdom. Lovin’ the same woman? Makes or breaks only the greatest of friendships.”
_________
And you once said when we were young,
“We will not tell our stories now.
We will save them to trip off our tongue
when we grow old, to plow
those fields with winter rye
for food to grow in new springs.”
Ask not how or what or surely why.
“The time is now!” this farmer sings.
_________
Rag-
ged
from a
trans-ocean
redeye and
train/ferry/train
from London
to Paris, then
challenged by
the strangeness
of tongue coin &
city and then 30 plus
minutes of metro panic
with multiple transfers
relying on maps bright in
bold colors and thank-
the-stars uni versal logos
to finally arrive! but only to
start, now faced with acres upon
acres filled with flowers and paths
with only that height far far-
away in the distance to pull
me to guide me to you almost
nineteen and me barely twenty
with our friend- ship at the
start of its third year of we
I mean oui I mean yes. And then
beyond all belief, you waved from afar, and close became closer became closest until you
_________
kissed me with your lips of kismet
___________________________________________________________________________
learning haiku from our newly dead
all lessons taught in life
remain fixed on the blackboard –
our dead remind us
_________
anyone could tell me that (but you would tell me this)
anybody could hold me tight (but you would rather stay the night)
any place could leave me cold (but you would guide me back to warm)
anymore I’ll turn away (but you would spin me back to here)
anywhere is all the same (boy, not from where you came)
_________
Nine Lessons on the Blackboard of Grief
- Births and marriages bring us together. Death irreversibly binds.
- The death of a friend is the death of oneself.
- Relating a shared joke is funny. Relating a shared death is holy.
- The pain of a friend’s death is strong. The death of a spouse beyond strength.
- The more money in the bank of friendship, the more a surplus of just-the-right word.
- Fate is contagious. The more connected, the closer we are, the closer we are, and on and on
- Consoling the grief of a friend is to reenact the vow of friendship.
- As with all beauty, the pain of grief is far greater than sum of its parts.
- As with all healing, to comfort a loss rests of the sum, the whole, the parts, the kitchen sink…
_________
Go ahead, erase the whole damn blackboard.
It’s time for new adventures – all aboard1
_________
time for another haiku this one from my dead
gaze at this perfect
halo, sleep will come just as
her spirit touches
_________
Only took me 55 years to realize that you were born on the cusp of Cancer and Leo and knowing which is impossibly complicated because the sun changes signs every year even to a different second and I don’t even know what time of day you was born so you really could be either, but you can’t be both. Given the obvious, you have to be a Leo not that it matters. You are who you are. I’m a Gemini through and through. I love to hold polar opposites in my head my hand anything I can grab with. Now that’s out of the way, I’ll go back and finish this poem.
_________
Now is What is Next
What came first, the e.g. or the what
Each step to you is clearer, I think, but
as time moved on, the what grew more
the more I knew, I think. For,
the e,g. came first for an unwanted what.
The step to next is the step to now, but…