The Politics of Friendship

Nietzsche has some interesting things to teach us about the concept of friendship; not least of all when he insists on the importance of maintaining a degree of enmity towards those we hold dear. It is never enough, he argues, to learn how to love your enemies - for that is merely Christian - one must also learn how to hate one's friends. 

And so, with that in mind, here are four short fragments of affectionate animosity.

Simon 

Overqualified and overblown he stumbles and tumbles
from wine bar to seminar pissing his promise away.

And those are buttons
that were his eyes.

Thomas

Remote and raptorious you sit

unspeaking at table's end.

Your bald head and bare neck

obscenely suggestive.

Perhaps you were once young,

but now you are old and an

eater of putrescence.

Mark

I know your type: with those finely curved lips

and boyish charms, eyes sparkling with the

conceit of your own corruption.

A narcissist who masturbates in mirrors and

dreams of murdering all those who will not

accept your love.

Laura

From out of the past she came ...

Doodling demons to demonstrate the darkness of her soul
and the two-dimensional depth of her talent.

A gargoyle gurgling about balls of light and how she likes
to come whilst listening to the Cocteau Twins.