For life


    He was your man, a lanky kid


    with Old English sheepherder hair,


    black like the color of night


    when we all piled on the bus


    for another race. But no one could steal


    you from being my confidant,


    prankster. At first he was skittish like a colt,


    all legs and arms trying to grow


    into an Arabian stallion, black hair flying.


    But three friends can only play so many rounds


    of Nertz before the conversation opens


    like flood gates, laughter trailing behind


    our sentences like punctation. We ran


    in groups of three—and I never had to reinvent the wheel.


    But it didn’t settle in between my lungs


    in the fleshy pink box we call a heart


    until we went on a walk, just the two of us—


    the boyfriend and the girlfriend’s friend.


    Swagger replaced with raw truth and honesty


    as ripe and rare as huckleberries.


    I saw it in your eyes, the fear that no friendship


    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    withstands the rapids and flash floods of brutal time.


    But when I said friends for life, I meant it. Mean it.


    The actors guild


    Cliches and cliques, clinking glasses like old lovers.


    Biceps bulging on the dudes who could only speak


    with sentences that ended in ball. Football, baseball,


    soccer ball, tennis ball, how I loathed them all.


    The chicks would chatter by the feed,


    painted fingernails like claws, eyeing


    the preening roosters. The church kids


    wearing the buttons off guitar hero—


    nothing heroic about hitting preprogrammed


    notes to songs with no soul. Nerds who preached


    the mantras of Newton but who had never bothered


    to eat an apple. How cliche,


    grouping together in an epic ballad


    to accomplish the most impressive nothing.


    We were the misfits, an actors guild


    who played the parts cast aside and left over


    like last year’s Halloween fare.


    I would chat tech with the would-be


    programmer while our resident hippy


    spouted rainbows and peace signs


    like the high school water fountain after gym class.


    The other two were chemists,


    scientists, daredevil chefs concocting the next


    nuclear weapon. One kid to mix, one to drink,


    Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.


    Sometimes the guild would move as one,


    shifting from the tables to the books, erupting


    in laugher as Myth and Magic proclaimed its wares.


    Be sure to leave the actor crest on the library computers


    —thirty flying toasters proudly taking impossible flight.