For My Dear Friend — Anna
Poetry
Things and people.
Too much of one.
Not enough of the other.
Like cheap vodka
and velour integrity.
Cigarettes in dreams.
Lungs pink and still in danger.
Despite sixteen years
of not burnt deep inhales.
Prana took another name.
He was my chariot
bringing liens to properties
and lies to rentals.
You never met him.
I no longer
have to write about
my dead parents,
their mismatched patterns
and striped velvet suits.
I would tell you that
I made a vest out of him,
and tried to live it down.
I would tell you about
our favourite professor
who died. I know
you would be
sad about this.
The subjects change
as the mind does,
with cliche winds and dopamine decor.
The list of embarrassments.
Crochet scars up and down.
Every wrinkle earned.
Preach and dropped to
the knees of nothing.
You would die of
cancer but we
could not have known this
when we laughed and
smoked cigarettes, writing
about Keats and his bones.
There is no salary or grace
high enough to account
for this, my dear.
Promised good fortune
at the end of your auspicious
chronology of children
and wounds and love.
A mercy
reminds me just now of
the wealth you gave.
