"Take another drink!"
he'd command
in his mellow baritone
when I began whining over
the betrayals and treachery
he'd probably seen
a thousand times.

I first met him
as I was lugging boxes
up the stairs
into that shabby
rooming house,
home to eight of us
castaway bachelors.

He and I became friends,
fifty years between us,
and we'd sit
in his cramped dingy room
lined with bookshelves,
drinking whiskey
talking about philosophy
and telling stories
of battles fought.

Mine were of
drunken nights,
bar fights,
trashed apartments
and fingernail marks
from skirmishes
with crazy women
with wildcat eyes.

His were of Normandy
and his army buddy
ripped by shrapnel
bleeding out in seconds
as he watched helplessly.
His voice cracked in the telling
as I shrank in my chair.

And I remember now
that he wrote poetry.
Poems I didn't understand
but how could I?
They were written
in bombs, bullets and blood,
and camping under bridges,
pedaling north along the coast
on a rusty bicycle,
after leaving a mental hospital
when the war was over.

He's dead ten years now.
When I last
said goodbye,
we shook hands
standing in the hallway
of that sagging old house.

He looked at me, said
"There's no easy way
to do this, kid."
Then he turned
and walked into his room,
closed the door
he usually left open.

I still have a poem of his,
written down somewhere
I can't find....

I'm rambling now...
there's no easy way
to end this either.