where are your old friends

ive had people ask me
when out of the blue
or engrossed deep in something
they ask
where are your old friends
when i talk about the
nearly instantaneous happenings
that i labored on back then
assuming of course that
out of the crucible of my days
there on the desert town
of the vast potato plains
friends were born
to be hauled around my person
like a soiled business card
in a wallet
or a saint christopher medal
sweat on and showered on and
hanging forever around my neck
repudiated by the church
even though cast in endless gold
and sold wholesale for the coffers
of st peter

and i think of those friends
who have sifted into
untraceable spaces
when i stand idle beneath
the suddenly all too blue
of the sky
and remember how our minds
were smashed by totally different
ideas and people or substances
and what was left
no longer fit together
as the shards
were blown skyward
by divorces or deaths or politics
or drugs notwithstanding
never mind if the wind blows
here or there for that matter in psycho rhythmic
undulations and utterances

when i think of old friends
who rollicked through
the tinny days when all
was blurred by haste

and muddied by manic delusion
somewhere in the dark receding line
of night and day
that is still moving along the land
all the time
old friends are talking
or aching or smoking
and drinking
or praying into the air
saving the pudding for last
and their thoughts are
gone off somewhere

sometimes soaring and other times

gone off low down and sad
muttering about the electric bill
and the birds building a nest
over the porch
and shitting on their heads

i remember walking along battered sidewalks
of my own small town
where my friends and i met
and it was a hot day
with the spit and cigar butts
littering there
proving that god is no sanitation worker
and dreaming of days in languid breezes
on the west coast
the yellow sun
filtering through the clouds
the clouds you see in advertisements
or in dreams
and friends would be rollicking
their teeth shining in the sun
as we lay on the tan beach
listening to the
labors of the ocean
rolling salty and powerful
and the women perching on their
towels like oiled up nubile statues
each a little maiden in the harbor
bronzed up and imaginary
and the untenable madness
that was our passport
glistened in our eyes
but just as soon

the sun went down and
a chill followed the night onto the beach
and the ocean which is never silent
rolled on as if someone was listening

life didn’t dance to that tune
the blue tune whistled
from the brass saxophone of old man time
and that very sound
that brought us
alongside one and another on the open road
and sitting in eternal shady parks
eating kaiser rolls and
caviar bought at safeways
while the sweat dried on our foreheads
waiting for the twilight
to free our spirits
or thinking gigantic billowing thoughts
somewhere along the highway
in old mexico
or california one
wailed and crashed
and sent us into life
to become old
and suffer the warps
of gravity and
silence
with no more in common
than a centipede
and a weasel
but that we were
reared beneath the same log

boise nov 2004

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