My Friends

My friends have turned into comic books. Incoherent comic books. My friends have turned themselves into the doors and walls of toilet stalls in slummy places. Are we agents or ornaments? Artists become canvas, aping memes and current themes.
The preoccupation with the superficial is telling.
Have you made your mark, or are you just covered in it, yelling, “who is The Man? Who makes us matter? Who takes what we make and serves it to himself on a silver platter?”

My friends have turned into drunkards. They no longer draw lines in the sand and dream of wielding powerful tools with their hands. It’s coke now. They draw lines with the coke and thank the lord they no longer smoke but it’s worse now. You don’t stink when you breathe it, you don’t throw butts in the sand where we used to play with our bare hands. You’d swear there’s no price to pay, no wounds to our lungs and no loss of taste to our tongues.

We’re addicted. But it’s okay, we’re cool. No kids to raise and no parts to play in the future. We are just for the here and the now and a pleasurable sound. My heart is infected, my self is dejected, I’m here but I’m dead ’cause my soul had a pulse that can now hardly be detected.

Why am I here? Who are my people? What do we call us and where are we going? Who changed my life and why didn’t I thank them?

My friends have become thoughts. Thoughts in the night, thoughts for my heart to carry each day. I feel them, they’re not light. The look in their eyes of the child who hopes and then tries when they forget for a moment how life scathed them.

My friends are smiles. A grin in my mind as I wish for them joy and good health. May they suffer as little as necessary, find meaning in pain and see that every stain is only a part of the story where beauty is gained. Maybe someday I will rest without strain,  but not today. Today is for love and love is expansive. Love works and love gives and cares and worries and patiently, waits.