It’s news, what news, this news

The news you’ve been waiting for

It’s time, finally, the moment

That event that you’ve been praying for

Staying up for, flaying for, craving for

He finally found it, he’s employed

Out without a job for months

Desperately pulling him from the dumps

Constantly encouraging and pushing

Away the worrying and reassuring

Him to keep hurrying and to keep trying

And now he got a call, he got the job

I’ve felt his pain and his anguish

Been there every step of the way

Closest friend of mine for three years

So many conversations over so many days

And now, the elation of his success

The fact that we’re both out of this mess

The ease of the lifting of the burden of stress

It’s not a lot, but it’s a start and that’s all I ever wanted for him

But then all goes silent, three minutes of it

No response, no writing, nothing added

The literature of the world of Skype dead

And then he comes back

He got another phone call, one he had been expecting

The same blasted one he had been dreading

That one I had just told him to stop fretting

About. The position was filled internally, he’s no longer needed

And now, I don’t know what to say, what to feel

I’m not sure if there’s anything I can do

It’s like I’m stuck in a merciless fray and they deal

Me and him nothing but blows and blows

And our blood flows and it flows

Dripping from our abused minds to our toes

I can’t even keep track of where it goes

All I know is that I understand his pain, his torture

But I can’t know how it feels

And so what is it I’m supposed to do here

From so far away I can’t stop what I fear

That the orders to the states might not come

That instead they might send me to Rome

Or some place as equally far away as the sun

In our minds, the hurt blinds our eyes

And we’re too far away to even grasp at each other

Now he’s in shock, but that will turn to misery

Which will turn to depression, which will turn to disgust

In turn leading to guilt and then accusations that he failed

And the one moment I thought we would celebrate

Turns into one in which I salivate

To feed upon the one that hurt him

Though I don’t know where to turn

I don’t know what city there is to burn

What world I can throw into the furn….ace

There’s no one to blame, nothing to lay eyes on

It’s just life, and in this economy, and in this market

Pain becomes your only friend if you don’t have a job

I do all I can from here, but when you’re slapped so hard

Sometimes you question your resolve

You wonder if you should even get back up again

How do I tell him to keep trying after this?

How do I pull him back up from the abyss?

Why does life choose to offer happiness on a dish

Then wrench it back and leave nothing but anguish?

What did he do, what did we do, to deserve this?

While he lies curled on his bed in a ball

I’ll head back to my computer and try to comfort him

Try to remind him, to remind me, that somehow

Life is more than just a gasp of elation, followed by a devastating fall.