ELEGY Poem: Eulogy for J.S.

My old friend Jeremy died today;
Or Wednesday, I forgot.

It is hard to count the years of yesterday tricklings
through ancient fingers like sand. I employ
overused metaphor, because I am afraid that
I never knew Jeremy, he was a hard man, bitter
edges of diamond-titanium wonder, threatening to
sparkle with rainbow glory in Amish moonlight. He
hailed from Rocklin, or so I believe, and he liked to vape
and suck cock, and stare blankly into over-mature spaces–

he liked to forget, mainly.

We were close and then we were not—
He fell out with everyone he loved, like a trustfall,
to love someone is to trust them, and it always
falls through.

I employ these stale idioms because I am afraid
that I do not know Jeremy, and I do not know
where he has gone. I am a Christian, and Jeremy
was not, but I am more than Christianity. God is
the color of many tints, he represents in
myriads of forms, Krishna blinks, and then it is
Mohammed. I believe this is so. Jeremy
did not like religion, or meat-eaters, or himself—

Truthfully, when Jeremy died, it was no surprise–

One could say he was one of those people who were not tailored
for life, it didn’t fit him, the monotonous ideals, the circuitous
arcs. He was not responsible and he was not happy;
Maybe, he could have become those things. I do not
know.

I do not know how he died;
I had not thought about him for so long, and then his cousin said
he is dead, he is dead

And it was like hope deflating–
A balloon drifting away from static circus
To find new horizons, to explode in a humid atmosphere.
They said that he was doing better, that he was finding treatment
for his addictions. I trusted them, because I did not know
him.

And Jeremy might have died for me a long time ago–
I ceased to know him until two years ago. He
did not talk to me. He was afraid of me, or
he was afraid of that sort of intimacy, a platonic
hope.

And for me, I think that maybe, Jeremy died today–
Or maybe he’ll die some other day, when the ache of existential knife
seizes itself from my breast, when I stop hearing his voice
amongst the honeysuckle shade, when I do not drive around Sacramento
to those extraneous plazas, and I do not see him beside me vaping
or Googling, or hesitating to laugh.

The people
we share moments with, even if it is a month, or a minute,
they shape us, or at least they shape me. I see them like I see
inimitable clay, and I welcome imprintations, new structures, various
memories. Jeremy changed me, and I thought lazily that he
was getting better.