Tug Dumbly # 28 - Black Sea

Black Sea   

You were a mockable gift –

thick Romanian impasto  

grouted with dark material

a case of pisstaken identity

too good to resist.

If we’d thought of it, we’d have

called our mimicry a loving thing,

though such love can hinge

on which side of the joke you swing.

And now you’re dead

my estranged black friend,   

and so I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.  

+

‘This is not an entertaining poem’.

That’s you setting up a eulogy

the night we met at my drunken gig

You serious man in a sea of clowns

voice shaking like paper

but the urge to memorialise raw

as you read your unfunny poem for

your dead friend with a brave quaver

that said ‘laugh at my accent you may

but some things won’t be laughed away’.

Now it’s my turn to say

This is not an entertaining poem …

And beyond that?

Nothing fancy or lavish, I’m afraid.

No fake flourish, or plunging

the bucket in plastic emoting.

‘You were here, who now are gone’

to pluck a cold phrase.

You had a quota of courage,

suffered, like most, in ways

unique and banal

the world rolled over you

people took you for granted

you were never recognized

had your talent hatched

or got your proper due   

(Join the fucken queue …)

You always gnawed the bone

of some project or scheme,

filmed shows, made websites

came to parties and gigs, and hey

and there are worse things than

‘he showed up’ to stick on a grave.

+

Peaty old Europe traced a vein

through you, plugged back into some                 

Cromagnon Balkans quag  

of race-curdled blood feud, drip-

filtered down through vampires,

dictators and orphanage

horror houses … yeah, ‘fraid that

accent came trailing clouds of gory

cultural cliché, gruelled ethnic stew

from the land beyond the trees …

But you did have some brutal cartoon

talk of whores and brothels and drugs

I read as a dark graphic novel

you used to colour yourself in with,

undercut only by the fact that you,

Eastern hardman, lived at home with

your old Romanian parents

in deep North Ryde …

Poor people. They got you

into rehab I heard.

I picture them hearing you died

+

‘Tudor is gone’. The message came

from a long cold source. Gone where?

To the old country? To the shops?

She meant your heart had stopped

in Greece, and I was forced to think  

about you like I hadn’t in a long time

like I wouldn’t have otherwise  

had you not gone early in this

haywire season of premy death -  

Candy, Chris, and now you

makes three in three months

dropped into Facebook plots.

Death is in the air

everywhere I look around …

But we’ll always have Spring.  

There’s that little shiver

of shameful joy you get

when you hear a friend has died:

I’m still alive! – Shhhhh!

They hardly resent it though.

It’s a little departing gift,

like they’d give at the airport,

to this life from the next.  

If you’re alive Tudor, your death

just a rumour, then take this as a postcard,

late, but with love, from the well of the estranged.