I had a friend once
and he
was a poet
Wrote over two hundred
pieces
He was a genius

Look, he said
Check out these mad rhymes
Tight as vines strangling yo' chimes

He was right
He had so many rhymes there
Tried to make any word rhyme
with the next and the next and so on

Awesome, I said
Your rhymes are mad, my lad

Two hundred and some
poems full of words that rhyme tight

So when are you going to publish any?
I asked

What you mean? he said
I been publishing since last year
With my every sweat, every tear
****

Oh, so where can I get them?
Magazines, books, volumes
I'd like to buy your work

Me and this friend... we never had a fight
Yet after that question we never spoke again
He would avoid me in the streets
He would cross on the other side
Well,
I'm not one to go out of my way for people either
We just never spoke again

Though I'm writing this
because yesterday in a cafe I heard
someone call him from another table
Well, I'll be ******, he was the bartender, my friend
and the guy who called him did
it with a kind
of mock
and addressed my friend with the name McGonagall

My friend's name is not McGonagall
Why would they call him that?

Well, I decided to ask him
But he talked a colleague of his into
taking my table's order

I had a pint of beer and a shot of whiskey
and no smoke
And have never spoken with my friend again

He ate flowers.

this mentally challenged boy
from the countryside
I used to watch him
in the fields
when I visited my grandparents
as a kid
He was like an exotic thing
a wild beast chasing
static pray
They had no chance,
the flowers
he would assault them
with a killer's smile, frothing,
and would grab
and tear and rip them from
the stem and
would eat them

Nobody knew why
and the only explanation given
was that he was insane

then the men and women
who saw him would
scream at him
to stop and he would raise
his head and watch them
like a deer surprised by
headlights
Then he would spit the colorful
froth from his big mouth
and would run home
hopping and leaping like a horse
through the tall grass

He was mostly inoffensive,
this flower eating boy
but they all told me to stay away
from him and would
always chase him away when
he got too close

Time passed and I moved to the
city and went to school there
and stopped visiting the
countryside and its wonders
I got busy
and my busy life drove away the
magic and mystery of childhood

The flower eating boy is now but
a memory
neither good
nor bad
just strange, interesting

He doesn't eat flowers anymore
because he doesn't live in the
countryside anymore
No, from what I've heard
he's in some mental facility and it was
his last flowery meal that sent him there

I don't know,
maybe if they hanged signs with
"Don't wear flowers in your hair!"
around the village and the fields
that little girl would've been saved
and the village would still have its
magic beast.

I visited my girlfriend in the hospital
after her appendicitis operation.
she looked good
and her smile made me smile

"I made a friend," she told me.

There had been another girl in the room with her
and this girl,
she was in the hospital because she sprayed a whole
can of bug repellent into a cup and drank it

"Why?" I asked.

"Oh, well," said my girlfriend. "You wouldn't understand.
Let's just say she wanted to **** the butterflies
in her stomach."

"Okay."

he watches the rain like
it's alive
but he feels less alive himself
behind him
the house turns dark
its last light going off

don't turn back
don't look back
keep going ahead

and maybe another house
and another wife
will open up before you

or maybe there'll be another
war coming
and the nation will need
your service
again

this time the fear shall be
less intense
The first time
someone points
a gun at you
you're terrified
the second time's the same
third
forth
and so on
but eventually there comes
a time when you
run out of people
to point guns at you

fifth

twelfth

forty-third

and none of them make you
feel like her eyes
watching from the window
behind the curtains
and no pulling of the trigger
and no bang
is like her voice screaming
at the kid to go away, to not look

"A stranger! That's what the
man outside is. And I'm calling
the police if he keeps staring like that.
DON'T!
you dare look at him. Go to
your room. Now."

What's a man when all
the wars are over?
A squirt gun against the sun.

His good hand, the one with
whole and working fingers
reached into an inner pocket
of his uniform, found
nothing.

He walked on
And it rained on
And there were no more wars

you don't exist when
my eyes are open
you don't exist when
my blood's not poisoned
when my soul's at peace
when my gut is full
and when I'm in company

So you exist most of the time
dear muse

I cannot recall the best advice
I got from my father
but the best
advice I got from
a man that's not
my father
is to
make friends with loneliness

If you and loneliness are enemies
you'll be lonely

but once you and loneliness are
friends you'll be solitary

The difference between loneliness
and solitude
is the difference
between
the naive kid who thinks one's
happiness depends upon others
and the wise sage who knows that
one's happiness depends
only on
one's self
and one's self alone.

"You might lose
your way one
day
but you'll never
lose me
I'm your desire
to get better
As long as you
have me
you'll keep
going."

that's what he wrote on the
back of his daughter's photo
Today makes a full year since her death

he put the photo under the front cover
of his first published book
and went back to writing what would
soon be the second