My Friend Joe

At his best, a living marionette,
All tangled strings,
Head lolling.
Guffawing,
He could make me laugh at nothing more
Than the pure anarchic silliness
Of his movements.

An eye for truth in others,
rather blinded looking inward.
I at one time called him, "wisest man I knew."
In the end though, all was blindness,
And in truth I'd only harmed him,
Proving to myself the wisest wasn’t I.

Angry, even violent,
An awkward, drunken master.
His rage seemed comic, then, theatrical.
Tender age in bloom.

Underneath though,
Hiding in an abyss
Of unspoken anguish,
A demon in the night,
That came to stay.
A black unending cloud.

And when the sun fails to rise,
For you, as it does for others,
When your tide goes out,
Not to return.
When you peer through the darkness,
Searching for those who once you called friend.
When all that peers back
Is that same dark.