friends

unnoticed

poetry

drowning is the loneliest as
even sound can’t get to you

water floods your body

thoughts flood your mind

thoughts of your friend’s faces
rapt in moments of sheer ecstasy

but not saving you
like the particles moving
a r o u n d your outstretched arms

and when you first go down
you know
and your heart
it knows

and it matches the bpm of
all of the saddest songs

a slow shuffle for the
last dance

you’re a wallflower at
this slow dance
but the song never resolves
and you’re last thoughts
are cliche

like that song candle in
the wind, or whatever

you feel like one of those
candles, and you feel the
flicker and understand it
like you couldn’t before

when the understanding comes…
well
you know what happens then,
even now you do

like when you had nothing to
do so you just fell asleep.

for one night only

poetry

we’ll sit around
making joyful sounds,
focusing on our enjoyment,
not the inevitable postponement.
of when we’ll meet again
once again as a friend
and when we’ll once again share
our lives to show that we care,
despite the month that’s gone by
since that time that I dropped by,
and we played video games all night
and just had a small fight,
as a way of saying i love you;
as a way of saying i miss you.

good friends

poetry

it might be slow to get going
but eventually it will
and when it does,
it will carry on,
ad infinitum,
and beyond,
for as long as we like,
never waning,
never lolling,
always good,
always too short,
until the time comes
and we have to go,
home,
away,
apart,
just when it started to get good.

old songs and old friends

poetry

sitting for hours
on hard chipotle benches,
barely noticed in the reminiscence
of times past,
of times to come,
of everything in between,
enjoying the moment
although we all know
that it won’t last,
that it will fade away
like a song from the past
that slowly disappears
and then one day is found
on a shuffled ipod
and immediately suspends time
for four minutes or so,
taking everything back
to the idealized past,
in which everything we shared
is remembered fondly,
improving on the reality,
which was good already.

At least until the drinking started

poetry

“It’s so nice to be together
but to not feel like we have to talk,”
I found myself thinking
whilst driving with old friends
to whom I had no idea what to say;

and I all but convinced myself
that this was how it should be,
trying to not recognize the probability
that our friendship had passed away,
and that only a faint semblance remained.

of bullies, cronies, slaves, and friends

poetry

You are tough and strong
and possibly unbeatable,
and I might just hate you
despite my best efforts
and my best misgivings.

I’ve heard it said
that hate is just
the inverse of love
and while I’m drawn to
tear down misconceptions,
I tend to agree because I’ve
seen Smallville and Unbreakable.

And now, through thinking
analogously, I come
to the point and to the question:
Do I love you? (or) Do I hate you?
For there can be no in-between.
And while some may label my logic
a fallacious, false dilemma, I,
respectfully, disagree.

Returning to the analogues, you
are Ender, ripe with potential,
potentially holding the future
in your young but growing hands;
the strong respond in loving
confidence; the weak in fearful
violence, attempting to crush
before being crushed themselves,
yet Ender only crushed in self-defense.

So without the crushing weakness the
prospect of crushing destruction disappears;
if only I can be strong enough
to allow you to be strong, strong
enough to choose love, rejecting
the weakness of hate, responding
to you as a friend and not a foe.