Years ago we four stumbled
drunk down neon streets
and ate takeout chinese
on a marble park table
encouraged by a man who
made bird calls for drinks.
We were alive.
So ******* alive.
You flirted with every girl
in every bar we ever found
ourselves careening into
like flights without navigators.
We made dumb jokes
kept almost exclusively inside
and ordered manly dark
colored beers and whiskeys.
our loyalty without question
or peer we stayed steady.
We found the booth in the
corner to squirrel away
from the noise and the others
and talked about music
and comic books and youth
until we were drunk enough
on spirits and company to
talk fear and hope and pain and love.
Capital L love, boys.
You feared there was no one
out there waiting for you
and the two of our four were sure
we'd found, in those blushing
soon to be brides waiting at home,
our reward for long service.
And you worried you weren't
the type for settling down.
And in some ways we were
all right, in some ways not.
Love was a mystery
and we're talking history.
I loved all of you then.
Just so you know.
I love you all now.
Although,
it's been a long
time since we've all been
together, you are still who
I mean when I say
"my friends".
For what it's worth,
and I hope it's worth plenty.
It's been years, but not quite twenty.
I talk to other people now in group
chats and conference calls
and there are loyalties and
inside jokes but you guys,
the four of us they are not.
Good guys. But not like us four.
We were real friends.
Brothers by blood and by calling.
Young enough to care
too much about one another.
No one could replace you
though far away you might be
you still burn away in memory.
One of us will probably be
laid down in that old pine box
before we're all in the same
room again, and that makes me sad,
but the future waited for
no man and time got away
from us.
You were the best friends I ever had.
And we're distant these days
parenthood, careers, conflicting
schedules and life styles.
Nothing broke us up, no blood is bad.
I would trade our time for nothing
but I wish I'd known that
small and simple fact
when time was something
we all still had.