Remember how, Michael
when we were seventeen
in the kitchen peeling green
pears, the sun mirroring off the knife--
slicing its reflection amid our tender
eyes, sedately, as we talked
of eternity, the thought of being,
the fatal syntax of it. The
blind white stare of a pure state.
We hugged each other in realization
that it was a forever process,
that eternity is in the now.
When we let go, our friendship
went on also, where most young hearts
go, with ambitions to get in the way.
I ran into you, fifteen years later.
Downtown, by the War Memorial
you were walking in the eye
of the street screaming at the world
from a crazy distant, as I drove closer
you were giving anyone, everyone
your middle finger.
I approached, not knowing you,
and then I did, the instant you told
me to fuck off, your tight fist
a ball of rage and your finger
pointing up toward God, telling me
where to go. I said your name, and
it’s me. Your face loosened, dropped,
you shook my hand oddly.
I never asked why the rage.
I asked about your travels, where
you been, your goings--
we ended up in a bar with
two drinks down talking
of your failing marriage
and how she’s been seeing
another woman. And how a
divorce would just wreck
your little Michael, being six.
I apologized for not being there.
I dropped you back on the street,
asked if you wished to stay the night
seeing the rain was heavily falling,
but you turned down the offer
exited and waved a fallible goodbye.
You returned to shouting at cars
and raising a finger at headlights
approaching cautiously.
Lightning struck the sky silently
as a hummingbird strikes a flower.
Later I saw your face on the news,
a father of two they described you,
who butchered his wife with a hammer
while she laid asleep in bed, with a
pillow you covered her face and
hammered, hammered,
whiskey on your breath. They found
her covered in feathers and blood.
At the trial your lawyer pleaded insanity
and you won the case insane, the judge
ordered you forever institutionalized--
they put you in a room, pure white,
no windows, no metal objects, or hangings
of any kind, no shadows that linger.
They gave you walks when needed
and then locked you back in eternity.
And I recalled our infinite thoughts,
moving from flesh to faultlessness
in the flash of a moment,
how everything could change
in the flash of a moment.
