We are Floating

In brown skirts and hair no longer my own
pushed into rhythm by a dance of foreign score
the booms of bomb mix entwined with meows
and some gutteral coughing and stifled cries
It's been a slow tightening around life.

Breath comes slow, hard, cold and brittle.
Pain and rattle, my fever broken in shards
like the small amber, blue and clear glass
the bottles of remedy, sticky, still resin
adorn walls, each a match to a symptom.

Yet around me death hovers near
it shakes my chest with bronchi in flames,
polluted, cut down, burned and torched,
they finally submitted and fell
after a very long, bloody reign of pain.

We all lie here - each in his or her own
mode, time, entry way into the Portal
I still run for arnica to administer to
my sickest. Suffering still and so with
fire in his belly, his legs still shaven.

My thin, weakening friend from Upstate.
How good you are, happy boy in your
prime, bouncer, lover, splat, dash, tom
brother, the one to offer kisses and hugs
oh we danced and walked way deep in rain.

Good heart. Big heart. Brave heart.
Go in grace and beauty
From the Light
To the Light
Into the night
Into eternity
Into beauty
Into Love.