My Friends

My Friends

My friends laugh at themselves in the gutters

My friend's words disowned their sisters and brothers

My friends are lame and hard of hearing the law of the land

That keeps them stamped down under a heavy hand

My friends smoke tobacco outta pipe dreams

My friends’ talk of aches and pains beyond reckoning

My friends reach out and lend helping hands

That are shaking from the pills that dissolve in their bellies

My friends look for dime store opportunities

My friends become the victims of fax machines

My friends are well acquainted with the pamphlets in your waiting room

The ones that infect our egos and destroy our fragile self esteem

My friends have been weaseled out of their monthly checks

My friends have telephone conversations with robotic voices

My friends’ voices tell them things that nobody should hear

In the quickening hour when a newscaster compares them to Dahmer

My friends have no mothers or fathers

My friends tapestry is made of cardboard scraps and needles

My friends are vilified as junkies impervious to normal standards

Of human decency by the blood cells that create their temples

My friends are public enemy number 26.2 and are afraid of you knowing it

My friends huddle in alleyways and hold prophetic signs

My friends walk a fine line between genius savant and bag boy

They eat together on Holy days reserved for buying and screaming

My friends' family is each other

And they will march on thin ice stretched out from pole to pole

Smiling at the ones who spit on them

Copyright Adam Gaile 2012