In the loving memory of...

Afterthoughts on losing my best friend. We grew up together, he was the first boy I kissed. Forty years later I faced his death and my own cowardice...

"In the loving memory of...”

F**k off, stupid weak woman wife in black,

sticking him in the ground when he...

When he longed for the sea, the water, oh the deep!

I clutch the eulogy you printed cheaply and mourn

the unsaid words and my own cowardice

in never speaking out. His voice through me like always,

saying f*****g b***h life you take the very best

and leave the rest those blind and ignorant, those

sheepish idiotic minds to roam unchecked above.

Friend of my living and believing, now

decomposing to appease tradition and the fools

trusting in some paradise of floating

by first getting flesh to rot, when you and I,

when we knew paradise was here, like hell,

like the love we sought never achieving, either of us.

That passing of self over to another being.

But talking always, always telling each the other

words are fire and words are fuel to keep

the wondrous engine moving, searching, the vessel

gliding us safely into harbour maybe to one day,

maybe to reach that city glowing in the midst of God fire.

Always me, you, the endless conversations

and the musings of two minds in perfect synchrony.

Promise to never go near that hole you're in again.

There. I said it.