Aloha

Everybody's Home

Burns to the ground

At some point

The scenery changes

Like that

Old memory of

Open fields

Filled in with

Buildings

Now 

Vacant and

Antiquated after

Remote working

Everybody's Home. 

Painting by Jules Tavernier, 'Kilauea Caldera Sandwich Islands' c. 1886 at San Diego Art Museum in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Write hot, edit cold

None of it was good enough.

So you see, here, admittedly,

I understand the fire, a self-starter,
it makes decent fuel

the words work better than well.

It means I too- must end this way,

plain as day, Cremation

and yet

Fire scares me honestly.

It may be a miserable moment,

the next page, the new leaf, the blank slate-

Wait-never mind-what was said-dead-again.

Each time it becomes easier to name the wrong noun,

confound even myself, crosswords no longer help.

In other words

I shall not say,

See me

and I will match you.

I am simply sulphuring,

reeking with green steam.

Saturated, and I am too porous for this

laughing at my whole self,

the incompetence I relied upon 

and moments reborn

into better than imaginable-Memory.

Pretty-

All ways worth the weight in white.

Angels giggle at these simmering sounds

mistaken for a narrow fellow in the grass

making coils warm,

it was all the write words

fuming in the sun

without a bone to burn or pick

the ice ages will do the rest.  



Painting By McCord, George Herbert, 1848-1909 (artist); L. Prang & Co. (publisher) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Dendrite doors

We learned they would come after midnight.
At least, I learned this on my own.
The neighbors all knew where those footsteps led. 
The lights had been killed before...and it was a signal still.
The horror was trapped in the suspense.
They never knocked. That was the true terror.

I never lived this way. I learned how.
Why have doors, they would all conclude,
since all else had been stripped away?
When we strip wood, it's raw hide-
stripped skin shows through.
We all know the smell.
And screens are illusions like musty hospital curtains.
Did you know that there is no word for Privacy in Russia-
just keep this to yourself.

I knew an American woman 
that imported 14-foot tall exotic hardwood doors from Indonesia.
She had them installed or erected
in a financed rehab mansion in Southern California;
they divided the living from the sitting room 
and the doors were always open.
It took two to move them.
When she was evicted from the retreat she tried to steal them. 
She went to prison. Not just for the doors.
She'd tried to escape to Mexico.

And although before my time,
I liked Jim Morrison's poetry 
back when I was just little and more morose.
Now his poetry seems hollow, soft in spots.

I was petrified to eventually find 
purple heart in deep prose,
and blocks of solid Bolivian Rose by Burmese blackwood 
so fresh it bleeds,
still...life with leaves and family trees fall
and knots make it all stronger.

We learned about the grind and carpentry,
sand smoothes stone and wood. 
Don't cut against the grains. Leave room to breathe.
I tend leave my doors ajar, 
and query why we each have so many 
inside.
I like my peephole. 
That was a solid design.
Unlike suspension bridges which transfer tension
and tend to be fire retardant. 

Now how can we move on,
without looking back. Locks break.
We cannot ignore these partitions anymore.
Divide and Conquer, knock on wood, 
for your own good and I should warn you-
I am not decent but have found a match. 

Photograph (by 'not given') of the massive old wooden doors of Mission San Gabriel which withstood the attacks of the Indians, ca.1908. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 

Do you have a light?

Carrying a torch
I suspect, like the rest of us-
Firestarters.
Literal ignitors.
Incinerate is also one of my favorite
injections.
Annihilate also,
an equally affectionate term
of endearment; intrinsically, me.
Who'd like to
Obliterate the words into invisible
strands of silken smithereens
that contrail traces of sulphuric smoldering
acid rain and combust blood as dry rust
when mixed with ink.
I think
I am betwixt.

I trust truth
shot from the canons lip
as if it would help
the self-destruction, vis-a-vis
reconstruction along
To start a pyre and burn it all up
before any further corruption
acting like battery acid
leaks out, infuses or incites
one of those pesky muses,
Andromeda forbid.
Albeit-
if you can read this
I remain,
sparkless.



Image of painting by Eero Järnefelt (1893) Burning the brushwood [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.