Think of me not as some maritime devotion,
born upon the salt, suspended in the air,
our friendship but a spit of land, a temporal
bank set upon its tidal death through erosion.
Tarry not on your scattered desk of grey matter.
The folded notes and pencil shavings you hoard,
in the sorry hope they’ll fall to a collage of memoirs
and make sense of all this, their endless chatter.
They talk in circles, double-dealing confidants,
so free of tongue, yet so confined in spirit.
In haste they claim unto you their longing
for the fame, the glamour of the on-screen debutants.
Still stubbornly, you cling to those memories anew.
A memory of a memory, a doctored past is
a game of whispers, to colour in the grey,
to fill beauty in the present, to set ourselves askew.
So you rest with sad grace, thinking on what’s gone.
You make a bed and twist in the sheets of old deceptions,
your pillow case of cigarette ash, wasted petals;
instead, old friend, here are my words to lay upon.
So think of me not as some wasted emotion,
born upon the haze, a clinch of jutting bones,
our friendship but a stretch of truth, a temporal
face set to fade, in all of life’s commotion.
