Last Year (With Friends Like These)

Maybe I died in the summer of

2018 without boxing gloves

Lost my shirt deep in in the woods

As naked as I came

Misunderstood that

Passage and Jobs suffering

To mean anything more than misery

There's no beasts

Just eagles in the valley

Pecking at livers madly

The last year with friends like these

Love you too much too lose you

Sober and weary

Poppers, Percocet

Paint fumes, poppy seeds

Entrancing and alluring

As the melodrama on the marquee

Perhaps in fall

When I attempted again

Was it a success

And I've been dreaming since

I must confess

To never leaving notes

Or sending letters

There were too many jokes and

Punchlines witless and clumsy

Nothing more benign

Than songs legless and lucky

To reverberate

Off of canyons in the valley

Or lost in some Nashville alley

The last year with friends like these

Love you too much too lose you

Sober and weary

Pitchers of Peroni

And pruned palm trees

The spellbound spacious landscapes

Seldom impede harmlessly

You are my family