I had a dream the other night,
                   I visited an old friend
                      who had died last Halloween.

He drank himself to death,
wet brain, liver failure,
the whole nine yards.

In my dream I asked him
    what it was like to be dead,
he said "Oh it's okay....
can I borrow five bucks?"

I don't know I said,
    "How can I be sure
               I'll get it back"

"Ah come on" he said,
"I'm five bucks short for a case"

I relented and we called a cab.
       The cab driver comes
            and he says to Barry,

"What's it like to be dead?"

The saddest part about suicide
Is that you’ve died long before
Taking your own life
And because of that
You decide to go
One step further

He stands before her
as surveying a Renoir, overwhelmed
by red splashes from her nails, her lips
Entranced by her sparkling blue eyes
and hair swept across her shoulders
its crackle, as wind blown fields of barley
Her words cool him as though
dipped in Box Elder Creek
Her moves have the grace of cirrus skies

He thinks this is a settling place
fit to build a homestead

Other times I kiss the northern winds, let them dance with my curls while caressing my curves. Drifting me away, a feather in a gentle tornado towards vague, dreamlike, foreign lands.  

& in other occasions I belong wholeheartedly to the moon. She's my favorite intimate lover, the most passionate of all. Her dark mysteries keep me addicted to the light she steals from the sun.

Then when the sun takes me, lights me up, burns me, sweet sweet fire, as he embraces me. A Phoenix coming back to him over & over. Naked scars & whispers of warm love, poems that tell me he shines for me, keeps the soil under my feet warm for me, tells me he lives for me.

All the while the ocean waits patiently for me to yet again submerge myself in the chaos of its storms. Maybe all the salt water in the oceans are just tears that've been shed waiting for lovers to embrace its madness. Oceans long for fearless lovers, lovers that fear not the wrath of its solitude and forbidden passion.

& once in a blue moon I sit in silence & succumb to the unknown. Most of the time words fail me and I can't describe the way I unwrap myself in the darkness. Dark matter, the ether, my intangible lovers living in the same place. There's an art to losing yourself in places like these.

Sometimes I belong to you, but for the most part, I belong to myself.

Startled by the crack they launch,
spread wings and soar
through rising summer breeze

Perfect black symmetry
wingtip to wingtip
recalling the first flight of courtship
seven years before

Circle the ripening corn
living the wind
feeling the sky
tilt, turn, circle again

Black eyes cast below
they see a figure,
watching, waiting
rifle lowered, patient

And she begins to falter
to mistrust the surging sky
her element, suddenly unmastered

He is oblivious, effortless.
Spiralling, alighting,
he turns his curious gaze
to seek his mate

And finds only empty blue
where she should be.