Just Friends

How many times have you tried to write one thing and ended up with something else? I started out with the first line and the intention of writing a jazz-flavored ballad and ended up with a poem. I still can't come up with any kind of tune to go with it. Which is just as well, since I can't play jazz for anything...

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January 13, 2011
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wish I had a kiss to spare for you,
One not bound up in promises and ties—
For I would never want to care for you
In ways that fill my lips with pretty lies.

And you? Friendship is all you’ve ever sought.
So must my inconvenient odds and ends
Be relegated to a tender thought,
For you and I will always be just friends.

Yet had I proper words to say to you,
Articulating what I cannot show,
Or, lacking those, the skill to play to you,
Arpeggiating what I’d have you know,

I’d find the intersecting lines of chance
Where inexorability begins
And hurtle heedlessly down happenstance
T’ward you, for all we’d always be just friends.

There are times I wonder why
This quiet yearning
Has wrapped itself around my cautious heart.
Then such moments skitter by,
And Earth keeps turning,
While our mostly separate lives
Go on mostly worlds apart.

Don’t think I’d want it any other way.
I’ll harbor no regrets or might-have-beens
But wish my empty wishes as I may,
Content that we will always be just friends.