POEM FOR A FRIEND

I miss them so much. I wrote a version of this in 2009 after helping them at their merch table after we did a show in Austin or somewhere in the USA.

Write poems for your friends. It's more for you than them.

 

FULL METAL NECKLACES

(for Andrea Gibson)

 

You are laughing up moths,

bleeding in your boy pants,

breathing your poems out

like burning garlands.

 

Soon,

a woman from the audience,

full of woe and strange posture,

is crying on you.

 

I watch your hands sheath themselves

into your safe back pockets.

You're not sure what to say

or how to hold all of this woman.

 

I don't know what kind of advice

can make the anchors

in your fan's neck

go away.

 

Closer.

The woman

in the shadow light

is a teen.

 

When her crying slows,

your arms wrap around her

as if someone is going to steal

her skin.

 

 

 

 

You hang there

like a constellation

settling into its own

wide black.

 

Looks like she is holding you up.

She is.

You're so skinny.

You’re so strong

 

A young girl slung around your neck,

snot and tears

staining

your boring sweatshirt.

 

So many more

to embrace.

So many more

sweatshirts to ruin.

 

We are necklaces,

dipped in your voice-box,

shining metal struggle,

crazed and heavy around you.

 

Your gay sweatshirt,

a traveling canvas,

painted in the unfurling mess

of us.

 

Maybe your poems growl for the living

because you hear the dying,

hear them so clearly,

unsure of how to whisper out the medicine.

 

I used to tell people

poetry is a lovely secret,

is hidden

in everything.

 

You showed us

that it isn't hiding.

It isn’t unsure.

It is waiting.

 

Just waiting for someone to call it on a Thursday night,

or wake it up and ask it over for chili,

or hold it tightly until it can wipe its nose

and catch its breath.

 

 

 

 

—Derrick C. Brown,