Friends Like Mine

"Friends Like Mine" is a poem about the type of people i attract and befriend, as well as those bonds between us. It is less sentimental about friendship and more about relationships of unconditional and forgiving love.

 

Friends like Mine

by chriss g starling

 

My-Friends are :

very much the same :

They are damaged

and broken

and alone;

They have histories :

            of abuse

            of addiction

            of torment

            of unfathomable loneliness

            of sorrow and despair

            of social sicknesses

            of indigence

            of anger

                 so much anger that we might all one day explode;

They have :

  had war-knives :

  thrusted handle-deep into their backs

  serrations twisted and twisted

  broken off and left in to rust

They have :

  been shown the furtive cause of a distrusting folk

They have :

  been deigned by a society :

  bent on destroying :

            their will

            their esteem

            their hope

            their spiritual consciousness

            their dreams

            their desire to be wanted

            their concepts of:

                        liberty

                        choice

                        freedom of self             

            their meanings of life :

              gone swirling down the sewage pipes

              into the green stagnant ponds

              of human defecations and mutated swamp creatures

They have :

  learned well the ills of humanity

They have :

  been turned into taciturn drunks and addicts

  in constant search for a euphoric escape

  from the world of :

the living

            the wrong

            the profligates

            the powers that be and be and be wicked

My-Friends have:

            grown mounds of :

scar tissues

                        over their souls

They have :

  been shunned by :

            high society

            low society

            upper-class middle-class

              all the way down to the dredges of working-class and no-class at all

            the materialist hoi polloi and their gadgets of self-preservation at all costs

They have grown a penchant for :         

                        the music of the irate

                        the rebellious incompliant unruly tones of defiance

                        the fed-up-and-not-taking-it-anymore bold sounds of anarchism

                        the music of a truth-seeking people-of-the-people

                        the noises of a hostile idealism of :

                                    sounds of self-exploring

                                    of life-without-life

of life- so much bigger-than-life

            for words :

                  that show :

right-above-self

                                            truth-above-self

                                                    morality-above-self

                             principle-above-self

                                                                           an understanding of true-pain

          pain-above-self

                   empathy that bleeds

                                  that floods our bodies                     words that say :

                                   we are not alone we are not alone we are not alone we are not alone

My-Friends are :

            incredulous and

            cautious

            impregnable and

            welcoming

            vivid and

            beautiful

They are :

            the creatures of a dying drying quagmire :

      fading into dust

      swept up into the wind

                  up-up into the clouds

                  drifting across the earth like mystical-winged-beings of ancient-worlds

      looking over the people of a planet ruled by the few but sustained by the many

                        and with tears streaming down their faces they scream out-out

                        they scream in fiery red :

                         “            Look

                                       See

                                       for just once in your life

                                       see what you do

                                       Look

   See                                       ”

                        and all the people below :

curl into a fetal-ball on the ground

                       they :

shut their eyes painfully-tight

                       they :

plug their ears with their thumbs    

and to overcome the voice rumbling overhead in the clouds

           they repeat again-over-again louder-more-louder :

            “              Leave Me alone 

                I am content here          

    Only my anguish is real

    I will inherit it all

    In the end you’ll see

                   so

    Leave Me alone              ”

                       i suspect that is the way it has always gone

                       and that is just the way it goes

                       still . . .

 

My-Friends are :

sad sad creatures

But so :

beautiful-beautiful- oh, so so -beautiful

And because of this i know :

            the world can be beautiful too

It’s just that : 

only our eyes are open to see it

Author's Note

feel free to be as brutally honest as you wish.

Reviews

[windmill]

yeah... not psycho-obsessed or anything.
tough week. just kept reading.


anyway.
you've got this killer way of pronouncing your style very loudly. you know exactly what you're saying. you throw in this color. this... very distinct form, and flavor. like in the red piece. like in here. it's very specific, in ways that elsewhere or otherwise would make me probably want to shoot myself in the face.

you wrote this in a way that's very relateable, but not generic or commercialised or cliche in the least. it's great. i hope you share this with your friends. it's corny to do that sometimes, but this is awesome.


anyhoo. dropping dead for the night.

[Angel Bird]

Wow! What a great read this has indeed been! I've heard and read and even seen already a lot about these people who haven't had the chance to be born into a loving family with a normal structured life.
Your writing is very good, very informative, very knowledgable, very structured, and has a great rhythm that fully grabs the reader, and evokes emotions at many levels. This is definitely a great work. Thumbs up.