I met Tony round at Marce and Micks

one night after the pub.

It was summer time, which I later found out was his favorite time;

the way sunlight smashed the treetops in Pearson Park

when you slipped in off Park Grove

and you’d get that sudden flashbulb in the eyes

like the leaves had all exploded,

but anyway, this was night-time and we’d lit up long past dark

and Tony was telling us about Bohemia

 how he’d lived in Prague

Ey, I lived in Prague I told him, whereabouts where you?

This was nineteen sixty five he said,

it wasn’t like how it would have been for you.

Yeah, and how would you know?

(sparking up and kicking back, ruffling up the feathers, a laid back attack)

I was young and full of piss and Tony’s hair was white

like ash tapped from a burning spliff,

a roof weighed down with snow.

What could this old fool teach me about the wastrel life?

So we had a Boho face off over cigarettes and wine

and Micks black cat snaked round the floor like a surly slice of night  

as we sewed wings upon our tales

and let them all take drunken flight:

I’d had a beer with Iggy’s drummer in the Marquis De Sade.

Tony checkmated Vaclav Havel   

on the Golden Horse boulevard.

I’d slept all night on Kafka’s grave

with a bottle of green fairies.

Tony stopped a Russian tank

with a bouquet of white roses

and a basket of canaries.

I had a Moravian fiddle player staying weekends at my flat,

but Tony had kissed Ivana Trump,

and I could not compete with that.

So the night went on and the talk went round of all the books we’d read

and all the people that we’d met and the amazing things they’d said

and no matter what I threw at him he’d lived it thrice before;

committed humanist – beat that.

He nailed me to the floor.

And then we got a taxi and I was skint so he crashed for that.

And I never saw Tony to pay him back,

but his name came up again

when I heard about his passing

through a friend of a friend of a friend,

and that night I slept on Mick and Marcie’s couch

like a hundred times before

and when they came back off holiday

I told them, Tony’s gone,

my best friend Tony, who I met the once before.