friendship – orphan poems

118. Long Hair

When I took

what came to me

I took

Idaho pool halls with

old men coughing phlegm

and young men staring bullets

at serapes, bare feet,

at bracelets,

at our beer crossing the wood bar.

Neon flashed our long hair

into snakes of flying highways.

When I took

what came to me

I took Quebec-quoi love songs in RV’s

rocking under original tunes

and the brown eyed boy

thinking out loud in accented English

into my long hair,

limp from acrobatic highways.

When I took what came to me

I took

bottle flies crawling corners

of bloodshot eyes beside ditches.

I took

thick fog holding my arms in gloom

under sequoia canopies.

I took fish

offered from withered hands

under California cardboard.

When I took

what came to me

I took

crowds behind glass under stars,

sweet smoke long in my lungs

and a pull off Glen Fiddich,

overlooking unpaved highways

scratching and scraping their way.

I took

red earth against my damp cheek

smelling of safety when I woke at dawn

beside graveyards prickling

the air with white stones.

When I took what came to me, I took

what came,

satiated by novas of my own

flirtation, inhaling with abandon

the exhaust

of winding highways,

clouds in my

long hair.

43. Inquest

(For TR, BB, & L)

.

Today I screamed

for fear

it has been so long since

I have heard a cricket

and I have never been given

flowers on Valentine’s Day.

My birthdays pass.

We used to be four

living hard on long tethers,

catastrophically heaving in

expanding universes,

mouthing off and

fucking with boys’ brains and

loving their hearts

and eating ourselves alive.

We are now sparse

and exactly four directions,

only air between.

.

Today I screamed for fear

it has been so long since

I have watched an evening age

in silence and I have never

ridden a motorcycle without a helmet.

I have never

received a love letter from a man I love.

We used to carry three guitars

and Black Velvet bottles, wore

fedoras, Vasque boots

and smoked like gypsies

tripping on each others’ feet

and ubiquitous hilarity,

cursing in three languages

just to watch the moon rise.

The boys came and were afraid.

We used to heave the earth,

quake tremors pulsing through confinement.

Now we seep and trickle.

Now we test waters with a heel

holding a man’s hand,

suspicious that we need him.

We whisper through the

telephone receivers

to each other.

.

Today I screamed

for fear

it has been so long since

I have led a man’s hand

and I have never seen the monarchs

migration route.

My birthdays pass.

We four cudgeled chastity,

fervently exuberant still

we were only miserable

abundance trapped,

believing in the control of

climate by travel.

We thought love was effortless.

Now we are dense as

salt water

and deeper than oceans

of earth.

Now we will each seek the sound of crickets

and admit our fears,

gratefully letting them hold

our hands.

.

We are sparse

and exactly four directions,

only evening air between.