maybe it started as a bonfire foi de vivre smokey
disgruntled bear California dreaming weed burning no
i can't make light ignis ossium 85 reliquiae
exhumed so far my thumbs scroll the news tick up
the tally with each revision i'm losing names
for what we're counting some homes
still stand in paradise who wants to inherit a big
big house with lots and lots of food beside the grilled
bones of the luckless no winning this lottery's
barren charity try to breathe fire chancing clean
past your chimney to erase the neighbors no apostrophe
for possessions anyones now your boy
smoked from second grade his bus driver
finds all the little children tears apart his sweat
stained shirt sickly sweet rags on their lips gates
soot from kindling lungs they're calling him
a savior he knows not what to do the wheel
sears flesh from his palms the class holds hands
to pray but which deity blisters not angelfaced
Lucifer mourning the paling dazzle of stars my daddy too
was just a kid once upon a time i was every fairy
tale a lilith a hellion in heaven i'm gonna be
that punk pyro flake who won't stop
flicking the lighter flitch flitch one thumb to tame
planets mercurial marred fat earth phlogiston
hisses inside me imitation recherche i'm trying to scream
my throat raw one me stays in paradiso the other craves
to ire self-immolation is that so mad to wish to kiss
the warmth of fellow souls though they're made of skin
charred plutonian Bồ Tát Thích Quảng Đức's heart intact
despite the blaze have you held the photograph don't tell me
his atman lingered because he trusted some
wrong god didn't i just tell you there's only one
Elohim ḥayyim Holocaust his Christian name in vain we're baked
sussing smokes from teeth sleeping bag from shirt you
from the mélange of me the slowest beat does anything kill
faster than light our temporary neighbors the celestials we wave
still-lit stubs from rustbucket windows dry grass passing through
paradise but rain's the forecast campfire plans awry they'll call it
an act of god cosmic control-shift-delete scrubbed corpses
rise from ashes glue modicum-a-modicum and it's easy
isn't it when we forget the threat of flame memory lane
hide-and-seek your tiny voice before it cracked count
to 85 don't peek between your chiffony fingers peep
we would shout when we weren't sure of being found