I dream of walls of fire and ice.
I watch them clash and arrive awake drowning on acid in my throat.
I long for apotheosis
but just get ready for the fight.
We line up in neat rows
to take hit after hit
and smile gap-toothed grins
as we spit the blood on
the pavement at their feet.
Rubbing our gumlines
to feel for new absence we
move with practiced discipline
to the back of the line.
Maybe, just maybe,
if we sell more time we can
get struck once more today.
We cower and we wail
and every ******* morning
we're back in line for more.
We talk the talk about
using our sick and vacation days
and we aknowlede that he'll only
be this little once
and we sob and we break
and we queue so that we
can bleed.
During our freetime,
the great modern myth,
there are yards to mow
things to fix.
Here a new socket, spackle there
and so much shopping to do.
Errands before we can
finally get back in line
to fight.

On the horizon on some distant day
there will be death.
There will be sleep.
If we can find the time
to lay down.
If we can just survive long enough
to hear the bell.
To get to heaven, we're told
you gotta go through hell.

Twenty miles outside nowhere
we finally broke down.
The engine had been knocking
but oh so **** faithful.
The last hundred or so miles
had been the worst.
The suspension was all but gone
and sharp turns were met
with fear and anger.
When the trip started we
were so **** happy.
The engine purred like
rolling laughter and our smiles
ticked off miles as we headed somewhere.
But we've totally broken down
and finding ourselves with
no power and still miles from nowhere
we finally begin to talk about it.

We live and have built uncounted cultures
on a spinning, pilotless spaceship
made of molten metal
covered in dirt and atmosphere
that is moving at 1.3 million miles-an-hour
and riding the wave of an explosion
older than the universe.
There is no fiction weirder
than every single second
spent alive in this universe
and we only get to be travelers
on this ship
for such a finite
amount of time.
Thank you,
fellow travelers,
for being here with me.

There was a time,
I am certain,
when food tasted better
and summer wasn't humid
and the truth was so convenient
we hardly needed lies.
Well, broadly speaking,
I suppose.
Because, not everyone here
was there, you see.
Not every voice made a sound.
The streets were quieter
but not everyone was around.
And sure, we think it was better.
Whose to say?
Whose allowed?

Open a window and
listen to the violence
the shouting
the generations of impotent rage.
Listen for the cries
of oppression voiced by the oppressors
listen for the center as it
fails to hold but
just gradually shifts right.
Listen and maybe hear
the terrifying sound of sirens
approaching in the cover of night.

We've not grown or moved the bar.
Because the really sticky issue
is that the way things were
isn't terribly different
than how things are.

I sit and wait on the call.
Problem solving as a summons
lit high and bright in
dark nighttime skies.
I wait for the call.
For the pull in my blood
screaming toward labor
toward love or toward war.
I am consumed in patient hold.
Call me to action!
Drive me, like a weary stead
slathered in foam from effort,
into your biggest ******* mess!
Unleash me, like a hungry Karmen
starving and deep, on your worst foes.
I long for purpose.
I beg for need.
I don't know how to apologise.
I only know how to plead.
I don't know how to compromise.
I only know how to take wing.
I await your call.
But the phone sits still.
It just doesn't ring.

You spin your cardboard doggie book
in slow circles while you scrutinise
The covers, front and back.
You puzzle over it like it was
some ancient relic
whose meaning,
if only you could learn it
might explain it all.
You say
DAWW GE!
Language still so new,
molded like earthenware into
rudimentary shapes.
A small but growing
library of sounds
that you've attached specific,
and not so specific,
meanings to.
I am Ah-da or Da or,
my personal favorite,
Da-ee.
Your mother is Bah.
Hey-o, Bah!
I notice the pale blue lattice
of veins, visible from under your skin,
that descend from your palm
toward the elbow and points beyond.
My god, you are a human,
little for sure,
but whole and complete.
A little person.
Made from a little of the
person I love and,
impossibly,
from a little of me.

When we were young
I fell in your fire.
Your passion for life and love
kept me off balance and wild.

Sit back and marvel
as you spread your joy.
Your warmth
Correction:
You're warmth.

You are fire, my dearest.
Contained but beautiful.
I have always been cold
like the night sky
but you,
my great love,
you are the distant stars.
You burn light into my
frigid night sky.

You are a campfire, my dear
Filled with laughter and song.
I am old dry wood,
gathered to build you up.
You are vivid fire, my great love
And it has been
my pleasure to burn.