The Good That Friends Do
I carry the you that I got to see.
The man that I knew
you could one day be.
The boy who told this Kristang champion, at the time not yet free,
"We’ll do this fucking thing called Life together. I need
someone like you by my side. On my team
of one."
I would have preferred to be second to none
in your fight to see what you thought was the sun.
And we’re not young
or at least, you’re not
anymore.
On Isola Polvese, I told them my age,
and I was asked what I did to keep it all
so youthful, and graceful, and just,
you know,
fun.
And again, I didn’t lie.
I said that I don’t even lift or run —
it’s all about what’s inside.
All about the love
that I still have for you. And is that enough
to say that I would do
anything to help you, without compromising
myself ever again? Is it so hard to
honour what once was brief and fleeting, and new
with a renewed sense of eternity?
With a revitalised hope in the defiance of hatred and misery:
that the future you thought you had to fight for
isn’t what it makes itself out to be:
that when you and I made out, my friend,
and/or cuddled oh so sweetly, and bravely, and closely:
that, yo sa kambradu, is a real, living, man’s honest work
and authenticity.