I scramble around a petrol token mug
purporting to be an ash tray stained in neglect
needling between ash and cigarette butts
looking for some spent tobacco to recycle
and breathe in the cancerous smoke of belonging.
"Just don't ever talk about me", he said.
"I am strong when you are feeble", he said.
The doctor twiddles his fountain pen
a parting gift from his late father
held with the poise of grace
and wielded like a lance
the pen can do many things for he and I
prescribe or chastise
the freedom with solitude
and the four white walls
of limiting restraint.
"Just don't ever talk about me", he said.
"We are symbiotic you and I", he said.
I wonder though is it:
Mutualistic
Commensalism
Parasitism or
Neutralism -
Who benefits who?
Do we bathe in each others glory
holding hands in the lost age of reason
comfort in the loneliness of winter
or just a dream of the endless
a figment of the imagination
and the passing of time
looking out of frosted windows.
"Just don't ever talk about me", he said.
"I lead you in the dark, I am your light", he said.
I sometimes step back into the gloom
He fills my capillaries
clogging up my arteries
with his dark and mischievous veins
calling out to faceless strangers
walking past in the haze
the ones the others do not see
just out of line of sight
mottled and disfigured and blurred.
"Have another drink on me", he said.
I am distracted by the minute
leading this shabby existence
and the opening of unpaid bills
and the carnage of last weeks washing
and the bottles of empty beer discarded
like a tramps ***** in the drying sun
monuments to a day before when we were younger
and wrestled in the long grass of salvation
and the long summer days of liberal libation.
"I am the one and only constant you will ever have", he said.
Without him I will be hollow
like a rotten tree trunk
gashed in initials of love letters
with a pen knife
saturated in the remains
of fortified wine bottles
and leaf litter molding
in the dying frost of spring.
"Just don't ever talk about me", he said.
Just don't ever talk about us, is what he meant.
