11/09

Loyalty

I have always been divided.
Because I love so easily I have a lot
of friends and they don’t always
match up well together.
I try; I bring together groups
at parties and in public,
introduce them to each other,
tell them stories, watch them closely.

Sometimes it works. Sarah and Kendra
eyed each other on the train to Boston,
like wary dogs, the decided it was easier
to blow bubbles with each other than to fight.
I remember the relief I felt on turning
around to see them with their heads together,
laughing at the way I scolded the bubbles
that popped against my reaching hands.

I was always introducing Kendra, sometimes
with more success than others. She
and Angela (both of them 5’8” or over)
glared at each other over my head,
and me oblivious and short below;
Jess told me later about the sparks
snapping between them, the way
each was trying to claim me as their own.

The enmity has lasted and I, loving both,
stand squarely in between them, as
I always do. Right now I find myself caught
between my ex and her best friend. (She’s
mine too of course, or I wouldn’t be here;
but they’ve been closer for much longer.)

And I listen to them both but I don’t
know if I should clue the other in.
I adore them and I would work myself
to the bone for peace between them, if only
to make my own life smooth. It takes
effort to be a mediator, to be a bridge
or border crossing, making of myself
a path which others take to peace, the ear
that listens and the hand that holds them up.


--


“I am dying, Egypt, dying.”

It’s a struggle not to lose yourself inside
of someone else. Marc Anthony
was over fifty and yet could not see
a way to live without his lover.
I’m under twenty five. If one third
of the Roman world could not find
a way – with all his life informing it –
to go on without his Cleopatra
then how possibly can I?


---


Gingko touches oak.
Branches entangle above,
framing the pale sky.



--


It's worth noting, too, for those of you who don't know much about poetry, that the speaker =/= the author. The narrator can be a character all to him or herself. That means that not everything I write is true or has happened. Jut putting that out there, in light of the INTENSE EMO that is occasionally present in my poetry.