It was your poetry that made me realise
that you were a friend as yet unmet.
How unlikely a friendship that was
based on our city affiliations alone
but how quickly it blossomed and grew
to become the rooted sapling that it is today.

I do not wish to see you turn on a spit
your blood boiling, your flesh searing
and destroying you; you is the you I
have come to know, respect and love,
and the image hurts me, it haunts me
in a visceral way; I would dowse that
fire, pull you away, save you,
even if you do not wish to be saved,
even if what I am saving you from
is yourself.

But friends disagree with each other,
and so in this I must disagree,
you said you are the best, why argue,
why pretend that your truth is not
the truth, why should the entire
world not see you for what you are.
But my friend, my bringer of joy,
you, one of my favourite conversationalists
are not the best; you see, you cannot be
the best, there is no best to be had.

Poetry is art, and art cannot be graded,
it cannot be judged; its value is based
on the value of the reader and beholder,
it is deeply subjective, and art cannot
be the best, an artist cannot be the best.

Art doesn't want to be the best.
Art just wants to be.
Art just wants to be art.

Penned by my hand on the 5th of Scarlatan, in the year 867 AF.