Warfire

 

 

 

 

Warfire

In the killing fine fabric

of inflorescent flame

we walk, we burn,

dwindling from kindling

to bullet-bruised smut

alone in a dark

our dying lights up.

  

Murderers in red

boil a soup from the dead

in our hollowed heads

hidden hired thugs move,

their inhalation our blood,

their exhale the air

where the fire fed.

~May 2016

rewritten and reposted for DVerse Poets Pub

OLN March 2022

Image: Ukrainian State Border Guard Service site damaged by shelling in Kyiv region, Ukraine,  handout picture released February 24, 2022. (Press service of the Ukrainian State Border Guardvia Reuters)   Fair Use

Snake Smoke

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snake Smoke

 

 

An eye is a window,

a window an eye.

I can't tell you any more

so don't ask me.

 

A promise is a lie,

a lie is a promise;

curling smoke from my pipe,

a snake climbing air.

 

Chaos the white bride

for a bridegroom of money,

worst man holds the ring.

Priest eats the flower girl.

 

A promise is a lie,

a lie is a promise;

snake smoke from my pipe,

a garotte made of air.

 

A marriage is a funeral, 

a funeral a marriage.

I can't talk now

I'm late for the wedding.

September 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Fireblossom

at The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Yes, it's a cigar, not a pipe. Poetic license.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Wind From The Sea, © Andrew Wyeth, 1947  Fair Use

Photo of Lakeith Stanfield, author unknown via internet Fair Use

 

 

The Foresters

[SCROLL DOWN THE PAGE FOR THE FRIDAY 55]

The Foresters

We gathered wood for

a winter we'd never see;

not to keep others warm

but so each stiff tree's arm

yielding to the saw with a whistling sigh

would sketch a rune of twigs, a ghosted fire

to magic into being our desire.

We gathered fuel against a

north-blown frost, thin-sliver shavings

to take the match of want

to a bed of coals where we'd transmuted lie,

fuel for the flame as the flames rose high

from our wedding pyre,

ash on the smoke-rise snapping in the sky.

We tore that chainsaw through a scrub-oak sea, 

worked wedge and maul ignorant of what bleeds

at the quick mistake, at what would fall, 

gathering sticks

for a hearth we'd never be,

any more than the promise

of saw-dusted seed,

the marriage in the trees

dropped unburied in the broken green.

June 2017

A reboot of an oldie never blogged, 

 a twist on Monday's theme of culture and nature

posted for earthweal's Open Link

Images: The Wood Sawyers, 1850-52, by Jean-Francois Millet  manipulated    Public Domain

Landscape with Stump, 1892, by Ivan Shiskin      manipulated                       Public Domain