Ode to an Old Friend

And you will be many, many things
to me:
the last cigarette
in what looked like an empty pack;
that long ago mix tape
on the bottom most rack.
My Anime ninja warrior
with the perfect hair
--who i will
never sleep with--
or a slice of bread and pickle at 2am.
The lecherous foot massage from a
shoe-shop clerk, after rushing 'round
five hours for a visa
to a country where
i don't want to be...
But i don't mind.
You may take or you may give, but you
will always be many things to me:
a suicide note scribbled on the back
of a prescription, found years later in a
cupboard smelling of naphthalene.
The bartender who allows one last drink,
then another way past closing time,
--and he's deaf and laughs and takes your order in mime--
Prodigal son or lying whore I'm left to see
but you will always, always be many things to me.
The first number I drunk dial.
Your warmth mixed with the last grains of weed
to roll a joint i wouldn't offer to a dead man
and yet..
comfort like the moonlit shore on which my ship wrecks
a worn-out drawing still kept in dad's chest
your bruises deep in my arm and breast
to remind me shit, this is what it means
to carry that weight
out into the night-- like trying to calm
a teething child outside the Opera house,
like hailstorm on a black umbrella
like looking at your ex and saying
"damn,lucky fella". You can wash in with the rain
and wander all across the North Sea
but always, and fuck that
you will be many things to me.