Poem about the Tragic Loss of a Friend

“To the memory of a lost friend”

Did the windows feel his crying?
Did they rattle? but one pane?
Did they fog for moist of tears that fell
while the pills drove him insane?
Or were the curtains drawn to hide him,
his face pressed against the wall?
I want to think them with him
as he lost to alcohol.

Did the bottle have a partner?
(With him, two’d be ‘company’)
Did Jim Beam or old Jack Daniels
listen to his rants and pleas?
Oh I hope the pile of pills he took
made a party of his brain
so there’d be some celebration
round my friend as he was slain.

Did the nightstand call a medic?
Did the lamp do CPR?
Did the glasses miss his presence
when he was absent from the bar?
Oh I cannot bear to think of him,
sprawled, ruined, across the sill.
Did I think a moment’s thought of him
as he lost to fentanyl?

But I think of beaten misses
and the families in their vans…
Did they feel a wee tad lighter
as the drink fell from his hand?
Did the chemicals that conquered him
take final blame for all his crimes?
Did the clock but forge a protest
when it tolled his dying time?

Oh, I’ll never learn to grasp it,
how this world can be so smug
at the loss of my dear brother
by bullet, drink, or drug.
And I know — I’m not the only
whose thoughts haunt him day by day,
at the empty room that witnessed
when he drank his life away.