‘A Friendship Distilled’

Briarwood Bohemian is a multi-disciplinary artist in New York City focusing on sustainability and color expression.

A Friendship Distilled

(1970-76)

Boston’s dead-of-winter day 

dawns mellow mild

pretends to be spring 

so two fast friends pretend too 

pretend they’re ten years younger 

and not early twenties dropouts

playing catch with beat-up ball 

and musty unearthed mitts 

on snow-melt slushy streets. 

Year later they’re in Berkeley 

living different lives entirely 

with entirely different girlfriends 

but they’re still pretending

pretending friendship indestructible 

pretending girlfriends don’t pose threats 

then pretending friendship repairable 

until that solo fatal head-on crash

back in dead-of-winter Boston.

Robert Eugene Rubino fantasizes about rewriting the screenplay of "2001: A Space Odyssey" so that HAL is the sole survivor.