Stalker

I used to write stupid poems about friendship

Irritating diatribes about how loyal friends are

How I would always be there,

How undying my friendship would be,

Eternally walking side by side

Tonto and his Lone Ranger

Batman and his Robin

Poems dripping with such saccharine

You needed insulin to read them

And a lie detector to deal with their untruths.
Friendship isn’t sweet, isn’t a kiss on the cheek

Isn’t a midnight whisper of faith,

It is a kick in the teeth, a punch in the belly,

A rubbing of salt in a wound

It is hurting and being hurt without meaning, too,

It is a search for truths that might not exist,

Ripping open the other person’s chest to the core

To find an empty space where you thought was a heart,

Threads of something else clinging to your fingers

As you pull your hand back out,

Something perhaps more valuable than bits of bone and blood

Or even love

I keep wanting to write nice poems full of sugar and spice,

Closing my eyes to everything, never saying anything

That risks anything ore means anything either,

Life walking on egg shells that I fear might break

And send me into an exile of silence because my friend

Really doesn’t want to hear what I perceive as truth.

But I can’t write poems like that any more

 needing to feel real even when it hurts

Always trying to say what I feel even when I’m wrong

But in the end always stalking real friendship,

Even when that means exile,

Living my life as an unwanted friend, aching for the chance

To spring into action, Batman leaping to Robin’s aid

To defeat demons he can’t defeat on his own,
knowing the whole time that moment may never come

email to Al Sullivan