Poem #2

THAT LIVER THING.

I can remember the day the e-mail came

that said that you were dead.

I knew it was happening, of course;

there was nothing I didn't know about you:

the scars on your knees, from falling drunk in barbed wire at fifteen,

the multi-coloured butterfly on your buttock

 put there as a dare years ago, when I told you

it was a symbol for the working girls one night as we strode

like maniacs through King's Cross.

That sudden wonderful snow-weary winter,

when you followed me half way across mountains,

after swearing to me you'd finally left, this time,

forever, as you always swore you would

and swore once more you'd stay forever.

But you didn't.

Not that I minded. The next year I followed you

 eight hundred miles. You laughed, and smiled,

and said "Come in. What the fuck took you so long?"

as you poured beers for us both in schooner glasses

you'd knocked off from the local pub that very day.

You always were a thief of hearts or something.

That awful summer day, years later,

that awful, awful summer day,

when dry white in hand, drinking through a cask all on your own

you told me twenty times how we first met

and how much you loved me at first sight,

using the exact same words each time;

and I knew that you were gone from me forever.

Oh, how I loved you, how you loved me,

how I miss the roughness of your cowgirl's hand in mine,

the bridle of your laughter, your eyes from outer space,

the softness of your words that put me fast asleep

when I gave up; the gold-dust of the sun within your hair.

And that promise, that broken promise,

That awful, weeping, broken promise:
"Now you have cancer - We can die together." 

It was too much to ask, of course,

I would not/could not kill you, even though you woke at night,

screaming with the pain and drank some more,

then vomited and said that beer was better for your stomach.

I would not kill myself. You would not kill me,

Though you knelt one night above and around me on the bed

holding a Block-buster two-handed above my head,
to bring down close on the pillow by my ear 
and then fell on me and kist me,murmuring,

"It will have to be poison. No cup of coffee you ever drink
will be safe while I'm around, Paul Burns."
And laughed, and laughed, and I laughed with you 
and that's how we laughed Death away.

In the morning you said, "It will be big on the other side
without you. I'll wait until you come. 
You're sure to get lost
without me.'

You left again; just went away without a word

So far I couldn't find you - I waited for a letter

to find out where you were.

("One day you'll teach me the computer, eh?"

And you threw up all over the keyboard.)

Oh, you never forgot that. You never ever forgot that.

("You a poet, are you? I can type. Where do you live?

I'll come round tomorrow, type all your poetry.

You do have a typewriter?")

("It was your words I loved, Burnsey, just your words.

Remember that poem you wrote, for me.

Nobody had ever done that to me before.")

(I put that last line in a poem, years later,

and it wasn't about you. But I loved you still.)

The e-mail said that you were dead. That liver thing.

And on the night you died you whispered through my head

 "I beat you to it!" We had a deal, first one across
would tell the other one what the hell was there.
"There's nothing here! Not a bloody thing."

 Still, in the quiet of night, your voice comes,

"Do want another beer? Do you want some more wine?

I'll knock up a mince, eh?" And sometimes it sings so clear,

You even wake me.

.