New Poem - Friendship

Hey.

Taking a momentary break from KING OF THE HOBOS prep/freakouts (opening this Thursday!  Playing for three weekends/11 shows!  www.kingofthehobos.bpt.me

Here's a Patreon poem.

FRIENDSHIP


Two days.  That's all we had.
Abducting him.
Sat him down across a second-hand computer.
Made it plain:  You're not leaving
This apartment, seeing the seasons,
until the work's warm, stapled, and delivered.
Until you graduate.


Joe and me, we slept,
we slept in shifts.  Kept him awake
with coffee, with brainstorming paragraphs,
with friendly fire from burp guns.
Seemed
impossible:  Kueberth put off
six term papers and now,
the clock was bleeding dry.


By the fifth paper's
end, and the last
frappicuno,
Kueberth wouldn't stop shaking.
He was a grasshopper on a
saucepan.    Suffering just so because
he knew how damn close
success was.  Shuttered his muscles.
Closed his eyes, headed for the bathroom, locked
the door.


It was then that I knew that sometimes
you have to drag those you love
into victory's barbed wire.
With what tools and nonsense
this stubborn beast of time provides.


With my father's
creative mischief,
I picked open
the lock.   Found him
sitting, sobbing.  Leaning next
to the unused radiator.


And, out of some
perfect madness,
I began to speak
in a gruff, patchy brusque.
For twelve minutes we spoke,
metal and man.  Called myself
Thermidor (the heater's name),
Teased and cajoled Kueberth
to get those fingers
moving.


That he did.
Haven't done many selfless acts
in this time.
But seeing him take that
stage,
sneaking pictures several thousand
miles away of him,
a wide-grinning wife, a baby girl,
I'll keep those moments.   When I
put my wretched self
to use.