74 Friendship poems

They had asked me— a worthy friend and a loving brother— to “stop shouldering the world’s troubles,” —one meaning Africa, the other women— “learn to laugh and live!” I grow hot: thinking that laughing? That’s easy: it’s all we do instead of crying. And since there’s so much to cry about we laugh and laugh and laugh. But living? You could tell them that’s not easy. In a real life in a real world perhaps. But here where on a bare belly for less than a cedi, you gathered in single pieces and carried ten bushels of solid stones your four-month-old baby straddled on your back, slipped, fell broke your arm—? Laughing we do for fear of crying. Living we don’t discuss here.

“It is in the power of every hand to destroy us, and we are beholden unto everyone we meet, he doth not kill us.” —Sir Thomas Browne We’re down here in the basement dodging bombs. As our loves freckle with age we must adore them more ferociously. Come winter you kick back and ready your weapons for spring. My next task was to get well. Five million years ago, there were different terrors. Saber toothed fears. Edgar Allen Poe was terrified of being buried alive. Fear is a civilising influence. It keeps us in line. Fear of bacteria. Of our own murderous kind. Of aliens superior to us in every way who’ll arrive any moment and sensibly decide to clean house. A terrible cry arises from the thick of things. My begging bowl runneth over. Heaven has been relocated and we’re not telling you where. Not even a hint. I don’t love you anymore. What might it mean to die a worthy death and how much should one brood about that ahead of time? I was just trying to get back to the boat alive. Let us lurch forward or hellward. What an adorable form of anarchy when the body outwits us. I am a heretic in their eyes, so they will kill us both and murder your children if they find our hiding place. Despite everything, I awoke full of praise for you, as I do each morning. Coughing constantly, I rinsed my hands and ate some seeded crackers. I thought about your face and prayed.

I wish I would like a ship that all night carries its beloved captain sleeping through no weather slip past dawn and wake with nothing but strange things that did not happen to report but I get up in the dark and parachute quietly down to the kitchen to begin the purely mental ritual plugging in of the useless worry machine above me she sleeps like the innocent still dreaming older sister to all gentle things the white screen impassively asks me to say what does not matter does so I shut it down and think about the lake near where I live it’s a lagoon getting lighter like an old blue just switched on television maybe a Zenith it has two arms they stretch without feeling east to embrace an empty park a little light then everything has a shadow I almost hear a silent bell low voices I brought us to this old city the port connects to the world where everyone pretends to know they live on an island waiting for the giant wave in some form maybe radiation in the yard the wind blows the whole black sky looks down for an instant through my sleepy isolate frame a complex child hologram flickers angrily holding a green plastic shovel then disappears leaving an empty column waiting Bill who I knew was so angry is dead whatever he was going through I kept away I never did anything I love his poem he was really good I keep forgetting his last name I always leave his handmade book on my desk not to remember but because for hours after everything everyone says sounds like a language I never knew but now speak spirit I know you would have hated how I think you would have liked this music in another room pushing the alien voice into the millennium the one you left so early spirit you were right all noble things are gone except to struggle and be loved

to W.S. Merwin I said, “Nothing for the last time.” You said, “Everything for the last time.” Later I thought you made everything more precious with “everything for the last time”: the last meditation, the last falling asleep, the last dream before the final makebelieve, the last kiss good night, the last look out the window at the last moonlight. Last leaves no time to hesitate. I would drink strong coffee before my last sleep. I’d rather remember childhood, rehearse forgiveness, listen to birdsong or a Spanish housemaid singing, scrubbing a tiled floor in Seville— I’d scrub and sing myself.O Susanna Susanna, quanta pena mi costi. I would strangle the snakes of lastness like Herakles in his crib before I cocked my ear to Mozart for the last time. There is not sky or clouds enough to cover the music I would hear for the last time. I know a bank whereon the wild thyme of everything for the last time grows, covered with deadly nightshade and poison hemlock. No last, no first, thinking in the moment, years ago, you prepared the soil in Hawaii before you planted your palm trees, then shared most of your days and nights with them as equals. You built your house with a Zen room. I made no prayer when I dug a hole and pushed in a twelve-foot white pine, root ball locked in green plastic netting. I did not cut the netting, so twenty years later a tall, beautiful, white pine died. I lynched the roots. To save my life I would let them seize, cut out a bear’s heart, I would partake in its flesh. But you would die before you’d let them kill that bear. Again, I say, “Nothing for the last time.” You say, “Everything for the last time.” Sailor, I would have killed a stranger to save the world. Sailor, you would not. We kissed goodbye on the cheek. I hope not for the last time. Home, I look into my brass telescope— at the far end, where the moon and distant stars should be, I see my eye looking back at me, it’s twinkling and winking like a star. I go to bed. My dogs, donkeys and wife are sleeping. I am safe. You are home with your wife you met and decided to marry in four days.

Pastime with good company I love and shall unto I die. Grudge whoso will, but none deny, So God be pleased, this live will I. For my pastance Hunt, sing, and dance. My heart is set All godely sport To my comfort. Who shall me let? Youth will have needs daliance, Of good or ill some pastance. Company me thinketh then best All thoftes and fantasies to digest. For idleness Is chief mistress Of vices all. Than who can say But “pass the day” Is best of all? Company with honesty Is virtue, and vice to flee. Company is good or ill But every man hath his free will. The best ensue, The worst eschew, My mind shall be. Virtue to use, Vice to refuse, I shall use me.

Before boys, Susan drove me to work, for teriyaki takeout on Manchester past Lincoln Boulevard. Inseparable, we planned winter and Easter vacations. In the stairwell, I tried to talk. She cut me off. Her echo was loud when she said you can’t see yourself. We went to see Purple Rain. That fall, I had dinner with a boy. Susan was angry and told me I was wrong. I felt it was true. Was it that boy? That he had once dated someone Susan knew? We stopped talking. We were eighteen. A decade later, I turned a corner coming out of a bookstore and heard Susan laugh.I know that, I thought, remembering how she’d saved me from saying who I was. I circled back. She answered as she had before we fell out. She answered with shame.Do you remember how things ended, she asked , because of boys?

What are my friends? Mouths, not eyes for Bitterest underflesh of the farewell. I was a man and suffered like a girl. I spoke underneath to where the lights are Pretty, pretty, pretty whence they came to tell One God gets another. My friends are Mouths for God, tearing me. In such a world Broken only daughter opens to splendor. My first thought was that dying is a deep well Into the image of death, a many of one girl. Later it meant to smile with no face, where Mirrors are mouths. Cupid and Psyche wore Blindfolds made of glass, which explains why girls Get to heaven early mornings Adam fell. Gods after gods we go. Still later, Friends shouldered high mountains to the lee shore. Gashed, and the gash a fountain of waters, The landscape defames a single flower: Amaranth. Magic hides an island world Of boys and one daughter. I buried a pearl In God’s eye. And yet He sees her, Defames her, considers His time well Spent imagining a continent of flowers Whose final climate is a broken girl. Bells of a Cretan woman in labor Hurled from a tower, flesh realer Than the ground she somehow upwards curled Into the bloom of her groin where bells Are bees. I am an old man with a new beard. I am the offspring of my child sprung from hell. Shipwreck makes peninsular metaphor Out of my hatred, her rape, and one bell tower. Confusion suicides the poems, heaven I heard Where the juice runs from stone-struck flowers. At the end of the world I must use proper Violence. Nothing is more true to tell. Tell the taut-strung higher calendars I’ve a margent in mind and new words Hope to say, catastrophe to hear, Old confederates and inwood apples Where apples never shone. Also tell Of mountains shouldered underneath one flower Called amaranth. They tired of the world Who made the world this way. God never Did, never will. If you were to call From the bottom of the ocean, the words, Every one to me a living daughter, Would shout wild mercy as never was before.

There are many opportunities here for unrequited friendship, the offer letter said. All you need is a chain saw and die grinder. In this spirit I force my eyes across your message, revisiting that due diligence tone you do so well. I’m searching for some whispered twist or shout, but all emotion’s leveled, the way a child will draw a snowman and a mansion the same size. What is a dedicated icemaker dedicated to? Do you really think those shades you wear above your head will keep the sun out of  your mind? Rainbows stick to any abject object. That’s why I’m wearing that same old funky dress. When you kissed my forehead it felt like the priest’s thumbscrew touch rubbing in the dust- thou-art Ash Wednesday smudge. I’ve learned the dance instructor’s expository gestures. Now I’m learning tangos to be danced alone. While comrades buff officious cases barfed from their brains — eight parts moon venom one part nose waste — I ask can mine be personally engraved? I’m living in a please state, smarming how I’ve long admired your hardscape of artists morphed to small appliances. That being said, I’m having issues. Do you really think that scarf  will keep your snowman warm?

My first best friend is Awful Ann— she socked me in the eye. My second best is Sneaky Sam— he tried to swipe my pie. My third best friend is Max the Rat— he trampled on my toes. My fourth best friend is Nasty Nell— She almost broke my nose. My fifth best friend is Ted the Toad— he kicked me in the knee. My sixth best friend is Grumpy Gail— she's always mean to me. My seventh best is Monster Moe— he often plays too rough. That's all the friends I've got right now— I think I've got enough.

My friend, I am not what I seem.  Seeming is but a garment I wear—a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence. The “I” in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable. I would not have thee believe in what I say nor trust in what I do—for my words are naught but thy own thoughts in sound and my deeds thy own hopes in action. When thou sayest, “The wind bloweth eastward,” I say, “Aye it doth blow eastward”; for I would not have thee know that my mind doth not dwell upon the wind but upon the sea. Thou canst not understand my seafaring thoughts, nor would I have thee understand.  I would be at sea alone. When it is day with thee, my friend, it is night with me; yet even then I speak of the noontide that dances upon the hills and of the purple shadow that steals its way across the valley; for thou canst not hear the songs of my darkness nor see my wings beating against the stars—and I fain would not have thee hear or see.  I would be with night alone. When thou ascendest to thy Heaven I descend to my Hell—even then thou callest to me across the unbridgeable gulf, “My companion, my comrade,” and I call back to thee, “My comrade, my companion”—for I would not have thee see my Hell.  The flame would burn thy eyesight and the smoke would crowd thy nostrils.  And I love my Hell too well to have thee visit it.  I would be in Hell alone. Thou lovest Truth and Beauty and Righteousness; and I for thy sake say it is well and seemly to love these things.  But in my heart I laught at thy love.  Yet I would not have thee see my laughter. I would laugh alone. My friend, thou art good and cautious and wise; nay, thou art perfect—and I, too, speak with thee wisely and cautiously.  And yet I am mad.  But I mask my madness.  I would be mad alone. My friend, thou art not my friend, but how shall I make thee understand?  My path is not thy path, yet together we walk, hand in hand.