These Premature Nights (Ode to Friendship)

These premature nights are a drink
Spilled at a well-lit dinner party:
Unexpected, unrequested
And dissolving formlessly in my lap.

Seems something's been lost
Which I cannot put my finger on
Or I'm waiting to regret
An accidental deviation.
The unaltered clouds, white paint
That translucently reveals
The grey-purple cheekbone
Of a divinely silent yet
Somehow spooky entity
Of the all-around -- those clouds
Are more like the daunting chant
Of a confusing savage religion
Or a nihilistic smoke signal
From no one.

On nights like this I can't do anything.
The compounded sounds of my chair's mechanics
And the consistent tapping of my half-crazed obligations
Are a suspended sand castle of an optimistic child --
Secretly crushed by the wind as it pours
Horizontally through a million sleeping leaves.

And, even now, when the world is my brother
Who didn't think out his practical scare
And in fact has caused me to cry --
Even now I want to retreat to you like my mother.
Even now, when the warmth of my pocket
Is my soul's last recluse;
When metaphysical notions are a bright day's deceit
And humanity's movements are mapped mechanics;
When you and the world and everything else
Are all just a reflection in the galactic eye of a puzzling God --
Yes, even now my heart's yearning traverses
This infinite distance which eternally separates
Two specks of soul, distance existing even
When our hallowed bodies collide in holy reunion --
After repetitive dips into melodramatic death
That we act out like my little sister's costume party,
With imagined tea
And everything.

When mistaken nights like these fall into my lap,
The subterranean love reveals to my misty eyes
The distance of necessity.