Hello, old friend,
whose semi-permanent smile
laces my vision like toxic ranks of pearly whites.

Hello, old friend,
whose sparkling eyes blaze
like the funeral pyre of my pride and prejudice.

Hello, old friend,
whose apparent ineptitude melts like happiness
as your name burns in black on that page.

You signed my yearbook like a death certificate,
wrote an affectionate note in the shape of nothing
worth knowing.
The lines bleed, multiply, crackle and shine
in the dull light of this most tiring expanse of computers.
Their brains function better than mine.

Hello, old friend,
whose pen now swirls across the work you were assigned,
work you pursue less like a lion
and more like a cougar,
if you get my message.
(There’s no taking the jungle out of you, Amazon.)

Hello, old friend.
Keep snapping pictures with your iPhone,
like it’s New Years and you just kissed DiCaprio in Times Square,
wearing a dress with all the greens of envy
splattered across the fabric.

Hello, old friend.
Keep telling me you hate it when I act like this,
when your eyes turn to four points and your skin to letters
from colleges begging like a forgotten lover
for you to take them and make them home.
The home you’re leaving for next month.

Hello, old friend.
Today is now solemn in so many new ways.
You achieved higher than the skyscrapers in the photograph
next to your eight-line submission.

Hello, old friend.
No.
Revision time.
Revision like the backspace key and the scribbled lines
over inadequate things I wrote
to try and climb your Olympian pedestal.

Revision like the eraser on the pen,
revision like the keys thumping as though this machine
had a heart,
as though mine wasn’t broken
because I’m never good enough for anybody.
I write my best poetry when I’m angry.

Ironic that poetry made me angry.
I can taste the paradox spinning like the clock hands
that tick, tick, tick until the day when you sit in a car
on top of a thousand suitcases
and a few well-wishes from your confederates in college.
I can taste it like a toxin.

And now,
now you’re going
and there’s only time to say:
good-bye, old friend.