For Leonard : A Poet

The cigarette applied to the flame
Still crackles
Just as it did 25 years ago
when we smoked in the dark beneath the whirring wings of moths

You could smoke so many more, now,
if you were here,
With the 22 brand new apertures in your body.

Half-Samoan with a Scottish dad,
Pale and wide-nosed,
Much to your chagrin,
You burned in autumn sun.
How much more did 22 holes sting?

Living too rapidly for received wisdom, you insisted we create our own.
"They're all making it up" you said
"Why the hell shouldn't we?

We invented it all, from the rules to the mores.
Laughed as we then flouted our imaginary etiquette. But a drunken barman poked 22 holes into it.

I stopped drinking for the summer and my writing got better.
You quit the booze & three weeks later,
Decided to join a seminary.
Became the first novice priest
To be banged up by the police.

"It's because I'm black" you said.

But that was you: always going too far.
Always reaching beyond the known. The great unknown was how to live with 22 holes in your chest.

It was 25 years ago that we lit those cigarettes.
Since then I've gone on.
But you stopped.
With 22 extra apertures
In your body.

With the lung blood bubbling up pink & frothy, fresh as raspberry juice,
Did you want to write a poem about
How it feels to die?

I wish you'd written.
I wish you'd called in those last, desperate seconds.
I wish I'd been there.
We have unfinished business,
You and I.