Noel Negele- Two Poems

About My Good Friend John

It happened usually

at dawn, while the sun started to come up

and we all wished the night lasted for two days-

when we came down from

the drugs hard,

our feet feeling like truck tires

instead of feathers

that we talked about the really serious stuff-

Syria, Hamas, immigration problems

world hunger, pharmaceutical companies

extremists, conspiracies, enviromental downslides

and there was always this bold guy telling us

about economical wars going on

and that we were really close to something awful-

this in truth was only a way of coping with sadness

talking about worse things

though we were, and still are, poorly educated

and the majority of us with criminal records.

But anyway, this is about my good friend John

leaning over the plate- a plastic straw jammed into his right nostril

just after I've told him to it call it a day,

that we had done enough self destructing

to last us for two life times,

my good friend John falling on the ground

flapping like a fish out of water,

foam coming out of his mouth

his eyes nowhere to be seen-

death rocking him hard before

taking him from us,

my good friend John

the more good looking one

the kinder one

dying in front of our eyes

bringing a flash in my mind

of him laughing at fourteen years of age

all rose-cheeked and careless,

remaining still, suddenly, at last

like a puppet whose strings were released

as if someone up there got bored

or disgusted more than the usual,

my good friend John

who is no longer

like so many good people out there

leaving us behind, remorseful and horrified

for all the chances of kindness we missed,

for all the love we came short.

Night Time.

Five in the morning.

Strolling along the whore houses and coughing

alongside dangerous friends with self-sabotaging tendencies

as the field of the sky becomes a menacing purple

all the lovely darkness giving away to gruesome light...

Time waits for no man.

After window shopping for a while

( the shamelessness so very honest and blunt )

you head in, more dead than alive, too drunk for a remarkable erection

and rub your carcass against this woman much older than you

with bruises on her thighs and no matress on the bed

inside a room that smells like a junky's sneeze.

You know there are vaulters everywhere.

Men with heads tucked into shoulders-

barely a sign of life in them.

Stoic, mean women under the red lights.

Flesh for money.

Cheap affection that will have to do.

And when you puke your guts out on the stairs

and it's that hollow thing echoing in the alley

your friends laugh

and you laugh too.