To Him
when the streetlamps play at being small and their light drips through midnight trees I think of your humble regrets
as cars pass through the glow shattering the yellow and making it careen for an instant you are back but
having passed on to joy is where you truly are maybe walking endless boot-sole-wearing miles like you always wanted to
in the gray light of a sheltered sun where the chrome of man is less diseased and its constant parade winds down avenues where no small stones will jump and bite
and dust is the taste of grapes and water is so dense that we all will walk on it someday
but right now your absence sits a stone in my stomach feeding nausea into my system like the speed of light constant and constantly replenished by the picture of you leaving
when even your hospital bed was made of paper
with curling corners and patient fire
gripping and lapping at its edges from then to now
slowly displaying colors and I remember a chemical treatment I always used to keep you prisoner
coffee that hid the meaning and placement of our smiles
do you know I still ache for you? — and I wait on the stoop where we first met
under a flag of independence stripes calling for acceptance
feline crouching and remember going out together shrouds and shirts covering our wounded Pride
and cigarettes burning down to our marked genes
smoke billowing out of handshakes
and our half-hearted dismissal of passersby where my smile was wanting to live larger
but had to relocate to the inside and later you through the taxonomy of sex
said that we were different but closely related
which I already knew and you told me that you were dying
lacking medical attention
and even poverty could not keep me away.
Louis Murphy’s work has been seen in Haute Dish, Sleet Magazine, and rock, paper, scissors. He has also appeared at Metropolitan State University’s Global Poetry Festival, and as part of The Riot Act Reading Series. A student at Hamline University in Saint Paul, MN, Louis some days enjoys sitting in the alleyway behind his apartment building, hammering madly at his typewriter and only momentarily taking his eyes off the page to shout obscenities at the local squirrels. Other days he sings in the band Two Eyes for the Dead.