three days later
you can still smell
the acrid smoke
on the wind
see the blackened
leaves a twiglets on
the green summer lawn

three days later
and  the town still
murmurs about
how close the
fire front came

close enough for
the northshore houses
to see the voracious  flame
to hear the crackle of it's burn

luck would have it,
that it turned,
luck and firefifighters
tested and tired, turned
the flame by art of backburn
back in on itself and then down to
the sea, down past the dunes
and then to die, to end in ash

five days of bushfire, haze and smoke
now just ash and grey black sculptures
on black ground canvas...

awaiting renewal......awaiting, awaiting

woke the woman at 7:00am Sabbath morning to save my life for overnight,  my body had ripped ribbed crack’d apart,
no spider web sized stains but cracks of crater size on both legs heading up northwards, gut and muscle revealing, spreading,
renting apart my chest and head and forecasting that
my twin two’s, eyes ears arms and nostrils,
destined half to the east and half to the west,
leaving the leftovers for the basement temple altar furnace burning
for the divorce division so rapid, death’s relief nearby

begging her to hold me despite my body
unwashed and face three day unshaven,
my body stink-stanking stench decaying,
so parched my chords, my eyes my beseechers,
for a stammering pus yellowed whisper barely could I issue

if she held me tight perhaps
the spreadsheet cataloguing my cracks divisible
would cease expanding, halting my perishment inevitable

summoned surgeons three but were so excited to see my
own red sea splitting and my ultimatum of egyptian drowning fast approaching, spellbound and helpless, all they did
was take cell phone videos to show on the doctor **** channel for $12.99

and she said,

*holding you now too late, the man flesh-eating disease
can be defeated if you know the cause;
all night I hear you pace and tread the boundaries of our
tiny shelter, needing the resting that comes when you note the hour, the sign of writ and done, for all I hear is you
struggle-seeking to release the words disordered,
hurricane hail haunting the caverns of you,
depositories of misrouted, mis-sorted sounds and the thunderous cracking now is their sound of their desperation
at your failure to form them, all they seek is the wholeness of formation and are force fleeing your leaking containership
through the cracks of their desperation

I will pack your body in ice, lay upon it all day, melting the water
into every orifice new and old, hydraulic hydrating then sealing
the apertures and lead you to your own promised land,
to thy Jerusalem capitol, where you may sing new songs,
teaching the Kohanim and the Levites new prayers

promise you the sleep of exhaustion with the sounds of
Canon in D to soothe, and when the night-frights
have passed, will feed you with writing utensils,
to teach that inspiration comes even by daylight, even to you

your best dreams of dying will be your best writing schemes,
when you awake, the sky cracks of inspiration come unfiltered lean,
and for heaven’s sake, for our sake, for your words sake,
then, chest will freely open and fully formed, thy poems will emerge
content and complete

and when you hear them sing:

“And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had”^

you will knowingly, be laughing, unafraid

the sea sang out
to the crazy stars,
dust beneath her feet,
flowers in her hair,

ivy pinned to a
black cave,
where the waves swept
past with their
engines of steel,

the clouds threw
their heads
back,
pretty swing
boats of
the whitest paint,

pressed against  a
surreal sky, above the
dust and the flowers,
the ghosts of the
moon.

The sun is just as      passing as I am,
but there's light in days     that helps a world grow.