A STUDY ON FRIENDSHIP

A STUDY ON FRIENDSHIP

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?Youlika Masry

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FRIEND (I)

I call you friend because the world

has grown accustomed to this sonance

and the Thesaurus is chagrined

by the tragic lack of nuance,

want of shade in human meanings.

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You reach for me only when

you are to court with talent

my smile, joke, tale, tear

—conveniently to fill the arms

of empty thrones inside you,

capriciously deserted by the prince

of self-love and his escorts.

?

Sometimes, it happens that you call

when my mournful heart is so battered

its wounds wouldn’t even bleed

—a smile, a joke, a tale, a tear.

Jolted you cease to expect and start weeping,

fearfully contemplating a twin sister fate

as you apply to sowing the heavy possibilities

in the untilled farmlands of your future

—never compassion seedlings.

?

At my barren doorstep your gift

lands with Roman glory.

‘Specialty’ marks ornate the package

to match the priceless looking glass inside,

straight from the coquettish boudoir

of your affluent vanity’s storehouse

—photographs, drawings, artistry, verses—

plenary account of the trip

your busy footsteps take around the earth

when all that would have been suitable

under the circumstances

is a bouquet of lilac violets

from nurseries of tender mercy,

gracefully to perfume a stone grave

for just a day or two.

?????????????????? *

?I call you friend, but it is time

dictionaries were revised.

?

?FRIEND (II)

?

I call you friend because the world

has grown accustomed to this sonance.

and the Thesaurus is chagrined

by the tragic lack of nuance,

want of shade in human meanings.

????????????????????????? *

?In the dark hour of total eclipse

I thought I’d try a human sun,

I thought I’d try your face.

?

I sent the blackness of my pen

on pages virginal, unblemished,

to draw the plans, for your eyes,

of my city of sorrow:

old lesions—now petrified in honored statues—

to guard the parks of children’s joy,

injuries recent and not yet accounted for

—enemy dagger? lover’s mordant words? —

pouring streams of sobbing fluids

from rung out rags of piercing pain

inside existing riverbeds

of common life and discourse

to keep the memory of breach alive.

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On the line of miles distancing us

I hung my letters one near the other,

like linen

—intimate, tear-rinsed, blood-stained—

and only hoped they would reach you at noon

when brimful sun the melanotic earth swallows,

gracefully bending from sapphire balconies

over Mediterranean seas and cities

to drink the tears of the young

and kiss unloved women.

?

The semen of my weeping came knocking

at your threshold

one blind, starless night

like discreet hordes of wretched beggars

—reader, can you picture this?—

seeking shelter in compassion inns

just as the night guard had picked for reading

the book of Twenty Love Sonneti.

Gently you dragged me like a silver thread

down the ponds of your eyes’ darker abyss,

rocked me on tender pillows

of your care reserves,

and sought to drown the poison

in home-made solutions

—tears of camaraderie and fancy French cologne.

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Better

you thrust the twins of your arms

round my grief-shaped shoulders

like giant sunflowers

that beg the pregnant clouds

to reconsider

while nestling in their hug

for just a spell.

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Behind my back I felt your arms

unclosed

like mouth ravening

—the sunflower stems too short

to bring their lips together,

enfeebled, shriveled up, atrophied possibilities

from aeons’ missing practice

and the opportunity

of love.

?

On my wet despair you wept and wept…

dismally, woundedly, forlornly,

till jasmine scents trespassed

the melancholy chamber,

jasmine of the Athenian variety

—the same as in the Garden of Gethsemane—

But one that in America doesn’t grow.

You dried its petals

in your face of human sun

and sent them as a gift to me

the morning after

in plain wrapping paper,

to help the eclipse in America

turn partial.

?????????????????? *

?I call you friend, but it is time

dictionaries were revised.

?

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