The Fire Cycle
BY ZACHARY SCHOMBURG
There are trees and they are on fire. There are hummingbirds and they are on fire. There are graves and they are on fire and the things coming out of the graves are on fire. The house you grew up in is on fire. There is a gigantic trebuchet on fire on the edge of a crater and the crater is on fire. There is a complex system of tunnels deep underneath the surface with only one entrance and one exit and the entire system is filled with fire. There is a wooden cage we’re trapped in, too large to see, and it is on fire. There are jaguars on fire. Wolves. Spiders. Wolf-spiders on fire. If there were people. If our fathers were alive. If we had a daughter. Fire to the edges. Fire in the river beds. Fire between the mattresses of the bed you were born in. Fire in your mother’s belly. There is a little boy wearing a fire shirt holding a baby lamb. There is a little girl in a fire skirt asking if she can ride the baby lamb like a horse. There is you on top of me with thighs of fire while a hot red fog hovers in your hair. There is me on top of you wearing a fire shirt and then pulling the fire shirt over my head and tossing it like a fireball through the fog at a new kind of dinosaur. There are meteorites disintegrating in the atmosphere just a few thousand feet above us and tiny fireballs are falling down around us, pooling around us, forming a kind of fire lake which then forms a kind of fire cloud. There is this feeling I get when I am with you. There is our future house burning like a star on the hill. There is our dark flickering shadow. There is my hand on fire in your hand on fire, my body on fire above your body on fire, our tongues made of ash. We are rocks on a distant and uninhabitable planet. We have our whole life ahead of us.

The decoy hearts sit in the ribcage like the original heart did and gives of the persona of originality. A Poser, as another might call it.
Like doll’s eyes, lifeless but giving off the idea of sight.

Soon it becomes decoy, dating decoy, and then they get married and they sit in the back of the car staring straight ahead at..
What they wish they could have had and they hold hands, but it is not what they think it should be.

The hand doesn’t fit quite right.


When you love someone else enough
They take your heart and run with it and leave behind the decoy.
The decoy just beats blood.

It does not race or flutter. It does not even break.


There is a gap in my hand where your fingers used to fit, and when the new boy holds my hand it’s clumsy and unfamiliar.
I wish he drank coffee and read books translated a thousand times over.

He wishes I would wipe my make up off and show him my heart.

There is a void inside you now that you do not understand, it is filled with the cracking of sticks and the smell of his old gym socks.

The weather is 62 and sunny there, he always told you he would start running, much like you would give up smoking and ripped up tights.
He thought it was disgusting how your lipstick stained his coffee cups.


You found his old hairbrush with hairs still attached, and used toothbrush laying on the floor near your lipstick stained shot glass.
Reminisce you can’t return.



He always smelled like after the down pour, after all the yelling is done,
When you sit in a chair and notice all the cracks in the celing, the bright green light of the computer charger, and you think to yourself, how bad of a person you must be.

Then he disappears to go running maybe, or because it was too hard to handle the way your sunglasses cluttered his nightstand,

Or maybe because you showed him who he really was, the reality of an imperfect being,

Through my mother’s thinning hair,
I see her scalp,
and I realize that I don’t know her at all.


While I was sitting on my father’s lap he turned the cube over and over in my hands, intertwined with my fingers, my palms already marked with stress lines. They buried my life line. I told him how I could not line up the colors, the way they’re supposed to be much like I cannot line up when my parents eyes meet.




I cannot line up with your footsteps or the cracks in the pavement, you are far ahead of me in life, in thought.

I am trailing behind.


One night you ran up the hill to the park and left me behind in the darkness to stare at invisible trees, and all I could think was could you hear my voice in your head calling you back into alignment wit me.

I drink coffee
out of the mug i never gave you.

......

just to spite you.

The boy with blue hair sits in a bar
He has been drinking since four o’clock.
He stares at the water stain on the bar that his glass left behind.

Lovers are everywhere, he thinks to himself, leaving me
Watching me, pitying me. They are angry that I did not bring another to this place
To fall on, to kiss.
He looks around, desperate to find someone to regret in the morning.

There is no one.
He walks home, he calls a friend to tell them of his
Loneliness.
He tells them he understands now how it feels to walk among lovers.

II.
The friend has been numb for months, but does not want to tell her friend that just because you have a love does not mean,
You feel it.
When you love someone else enough they take your feelings too.
They take your heart and run with it and leave behind the decoy.
The decoy just beats blood.

It does not race or flutter. It does not even break.

III.
The boy does not realize he is jealous of people who do not love each other.

IV.
The decoy hearts sit in the ribcage like the original heart did and give of the persona of originality. A Poser, as another might call it.
Like doll’s eyes, lifeless but giving off the idea of sight.

Soon it becomes decoy, dating decoy, and then they get married and they sit in the back of the car staring straight ahead at..
What they wish they could have had and they hold hands, but it is not what they think it should be.

The hand doesn’t fit quite right.

V.
The boy wanders through town to another friends house, sleeps with him, wakes up to the sound of…
A general heartbeat.

(This poem is in progress, i'll take any suggestions on it)



He has a three legged cat that hops through the room,
and he tastes like *** a lot of the time.


I dreamt about an old lover the other night,
He held my waste tightly while I searched for…

You.

But I wasn’t looking for you human form,
Only the distraction
Of another’s scent,
The warm embrace of someone who uses the word ‘love’ without
Knowing its power.


I want to walk on the street again where the old church and courthouse are,
Sipping coffee and wearing torn tights, fashionably ripped I’d tell my mother, when she tried to throw them away and wash my jeans too much.
They faded, as did our snow tracks, and the areas we slipped on ice are melted now.
To ant covered grass.

Loud crowded bars are now, only a memory to me and and you’re messy room where all my belongings are lost, is owned by another now.
They do not know whose memories are stored there.


I go in and out of numbness like of the beeping of a heart monitor.

---alive---wondering------alive-----wondering—FEELING----getupw­orkgotobedwriteitdown---


I am not lost like I always thought I would be,

It is more like the times, I pretended to sleep next to you but was really listening to you breath.

The sun will beat down on your down casted eyes,
Your shadow will stretch in front of you, begging for separation from what you are becoming.

You will fall in love and he will walk with you on cigarette-covered streets. Tripping on uneven sidewalks and petting stray cats.

He will grow apart from you, like your shadow does when the sun sets.

Later, he will leave and you will be A walking hole with arms and legs, like a hollow tree,
In the park the children play around you but never questions how the hole got there, it is now filled with old, bird’s nests and people’s forgotten garbage, where the others have etched their lover’s name with a promise that is too hard too keep.
You will collect it all much like how his words collected in your mouth, and his shoes smelt up the room.

you will no longer wander with a beating heart.

Staring at the crescent shaped scar on your arm,
Smelling you, like outside, like old rain on the pavement.
You rub my back slowly and I fall asleep

Now. Sitting alone in the kitchen, sipping twice re-heated coffee,
Snow is melting off the grass.

He left behind reminisce I can't return
his imprint in the sheets.
old hairs  left behind from tossing and turning.
I can only find his warn out socks in the garbage can,
caked in blood from a hard walk to work

I take out the garbage, dump the coffee,
Talk to a few people that fill a gap, and they
Tell me how much they love me.

They are just words now, with no connection.
I say it back to be polite, I smile to ease the burden.


and maybe at one time I loved them too.

I was

was was
was

was
Was



was
was

broken­

was
Was

lost

was


was           was



…………..




without you.



I am
am

am am


am     surviving
(barely)

Last time you talked he had a beer in
his hand.
he talked about her eyes,
When you kissed you ripped his papers with
your feet.

but he is home sleeping now,
While you wait for a plane to take you 500 miles away.


When you’re a child waiting
For the plane feels like an eternity.
When you’re on it doesn’t even feel like it’s moving.

you wonder why it isn’t enough to fall asleep on their shoulder during a 40 minute plane ride.


You grip the arm rests,
Squeeze your eyes shut,
And you want to run and tell him,
You know all the things he knows now,
So he can love you, like he loves her.

I.
I walked home from a grocery store
5 miles from my house,
I walked a long gravel road without shoes
Blisters forming and bleeding, stones stabbing my feet

II.
While walking I saw a young boys grave marker
Designed like hockey sticks next to a bench, with his picture
And fresh purple flowers.


I never noticed it from the road.


III.
There was a rotting deer carcass
Not far from the field,

when I took a breath in,
I realized I now know what death smells like.

I felt it watching me as I walked away,
And I was afraid.


IV.
The sky became dark,
While I walked through people’s yards, by windows with families looking back at me.
I walked without shoes through wet grass, leaving blood trails.

V.
I walked into my house with a feeling of a dread,
Looking at the mess I left behind on the carpet of blood and grass
Washing my feet in my tub, a blood blister covering my heel.


We are surrounded by death, and too busy to see it.
We are a self centered world, we are all

Dying alone..

Staring at the crescent shaped scar on your arm,
Smelling you, like outside, like old rain on the pavement.
You rub my back slowly and I fall asleep

Now. Sitting alone in the kitchen, sipping twice re-heated coffee,
Snow is melting off the grass, the sun beats down on us all,
Time is passing slowly.



We split and turn into different people, with each season, each time.
We come to know, what it is to wake up and feel sudden loneliness,
sudden silence from the voices in your dreams.

The phantom warmth around your body when you imagine the person is there.
But it is only their imprint in the sheets. Only old hairs they left behind from tossing and turning. You can only find their warn out socks in the garbage can, caked in blood from a hard walk to work.

Everyone leaves behind reminisce that you cannot return.


You take out the garbage, dump the coffee,
Talk to a few people that fill a gap, and they
Tell you how much they love you,

But it is nothing more than how it sounds when snow is covering the trees. When nature goes back to sleep, when the world becomes a white blur.

They are just words now, with no connection.
You say it back to be polite, you smile to ease the burden.


And maybe at one time you loved them too,

But for now, they just keep the days going.

All roads lead to the hospital…
To the room of your own conception,


Where you were pulled into the world by
unknown hands.

You claim it is your artistic style that makes us.
That positions the words on this page,
You say mine is too broken



Up.


All roads meet in your bedroom,
With abandoned bottles and shoes, the smell of old coffee filters,


You claim you are at odds with your creator,
With your creation.

And I am the muse who later came to **** you.

I am the voice you sought for reason

But silenced like a sedative.


All roads split at the old school building with memories
And hung up black and white photos with no pattern or placement with the false claim of being an instillation.


You are forever in those photos, in my mind, finger printed by your existence.

I  was sleeping on the floor, where you consummated your first relationship, and I wondered how these moments all get intertwined.

Me, your first real love, laying on top of your first time, with someone you used for a warm body to fill the void
That you created
For yourself.
All roads end with an unclean floor.

It is an odd feeling to wake up everyday and know
That the person you once knew everything about,
Is walking around now…

Breathing, eating, sleeping, having ***, going to work, coming home,
They do these things without you now, they know you too, they know the lines in your hands and the freckle patterns on your arms.
They know what wakes you at night and puts you too sleep.


You haven’t spoken to them.
You know them as they were then, the sun in their hair, the constant look of anger, but the warmth and security of their arms. The reassurance of their words. Their quiet footsteps even in a loud crowded room.

You knew them by smell and by the feeling that would come over a room when they were around

Now you only know of them, of their existence.
You no longer know them, or the way they take their coffee. Or how much they like to drink.

If you saw them in public place, your eyes could only flicker to them for a moment, and then away again.
they are just a something passing by, someone you say ‘excuse me’ too as you move out of their way,
a mild inconvenience on the highway,
the reason for you reading the same page over and over again,


they walk out and you feel it again
the feeling that rises in your throat,
the instinct to call out, to fix, to love.

They are just something imprinted in you but no longer yours.

You are…
A changing of a season, a newly formed butterfly breaking out of the cocoon.
Your wings are wet and you are afraid,
The world is so full of walking voids.

I can hear your thoughts while you throw another
Beer can on the ground. Your room, is filled with used coffee filters.
Covered with papers and ***** clothes,

I am  sitting on your unmade bed, you spit on the floor and tell me you don’t know any better, because you love me.

My coffee *** is moldy and smells like your room used to smell. When I opened it there was green everywhere, a marker of time,
And while standing in line at the gas station,
it wasn’t a song on the radio,
it wasn’t someone who looked like you,

it was the warmth of a styrophom cup,
the way my mouth tastes like yours did after the first sip,
the smell of you in the morning when you didn’t sleep the night before

the stale smell of morning when your sleep was restless and no cigarette will calm you.
They just collect outside your door, you don’t even smoke them right.

I stand across from your old apartment; I walk by in hopes that you have somehow come back.
The cold win blows right through me, through a hole in my body.





I Hold my cup close to my chest, this is just a symbol now, something you do to keep the memories straight.

Something to stay awake, alert, not as dead as you look

(feel)


you throw the lipstick stained cup away with the rest of the garbage and keep walking, you return home to find your coffee machine is broken.

You put it in the box it came in, outside in the garbage with a note that says,

“Don’t bother, it’s broken”

The sun will beat down on your down casted eyes,
Your shadow will stretch in front of you, begging for separation from what you are becoming.

You will fall in love and he will walk with you on cigarette-covered streets. Tripping on uneven sidewalks and petting stray cats.

He will grow apart from you, like your shadow does when the sun sets, stretching longer towards a future you cannot see.

Later, he will leave and you will be A walking hole with arms and legs, like a hollow tree,
In the park the children play around you but never questions how the hole got there, the hole that is now filled with old, used bird’s nests and people’s forgotten garbage, where the others have etched their lover’s name with a promise that is too hard too keep.
You will collect it all and you will not wonder why people love and walk away, you will not wonder how people sleep next to a body without a name, and you no longer question the separation of shadows and their owners.

All roads lead to the hospital…
To the room of your own conception,


Where you were pulled into the world by
unknown hands.

You claim it is your artistic style that makes us.
That positions the words on this page,
You say mine is too broken



Up.


All roads meet in your bedroom,
With abandoned bottles and shoes, the smell of old coffee filters,


You claim you are at odds with your creator,
With your creation.

And I am the muse who later came to **** you.

I am the voice you sought for reason

But silenced like a sedative.


All roads split at the old school building with memories
And hung up black and white photos with no pattern or placement with the false claim of being an instillation.


You are forever in those photos, in my mind, finger printed by your existence.

I  was sleeping on the floor, where you consummated your first relationship, and I wondered how these moments all get intertwined.

Me, your first real love, laying on top of your first time, with someone you used for a warm body to fill the void
That you created
For yourself.
All roads end with an unclean floor.

i listen to your quick in takes of breath,
compared to my slow exhale,
my fingers smell like the cigarette I had,
a few hours ago.

i am frozen here,
while you shake and rattle.
crying the leaves are pasted to the ground,
the limbs of trees are still,
your tears are drenching my shoulder,
i am inside you now,
but feeling nothing.

I stare at
the water shining back at me from the road.


and your eyes are still closed on me,
‘i love you’ is all you tell me.


all I can think to say







Is “it’s been raining,
all day

the roads are wet”.

Blueberry lemonade Smirnoff
bottles
cover the floor.
He is passed out
a beer in his hand.
   I play with the littered blue caps

the drink stings my throat,
   my cigarette burns a hole
in my stockings
at the knee.


I wander alone and always end up at a park,


Where we used to walk
where you’re not allowed in after ten
where he spun me on a merry-go-round until I was sick.


I am drunk and
He knows it, while he hugs me tight,
“it would really hurt to lose you” he says.
I’m not going anywhere, I tell him
and he kisses my cheek.


He holds my hand while we walk home.
I know he does not love me.
But I keep loving him anyway,
and going on walks late at night,
when it’s too dark to see the piled up train parts,
or the cracks in the sidewalk, and he grabs my hand every time I trip.



“I love you” he tells me,
while he hugs me tight on the playground.
and I tell him I love him, too. The difference is, the meaning.

Love is

Is

Is
Is
Is

Us

Is
Is



Is    is
Is
       Is
Is
       Is
Is
Is

Is is

            
Is
                                      You.


Is
   Is








Is

Fleeting.

You are
the


Dripping faucet

The crack in an ice cube…



The carpet imprint under a piece furniture
(wehaven’tmovedfor30years)

the strand of hair in cold, stale cup of coffee. . .


a rustling of papers

we slept here,
all of us.

in a white room
with a broken fire place
with writing on the wall



you are the eyes that never close and the lips

i’ve never felt.

Through my mother’s thinning hair,
I see her scalp,
and I realize that I don’t know her at all.


Over and over, like a broken record, with 3 straight glasses of *****,
This boy sat on the floor of the living room, and talked about his relationship,
“it’s a routine, it’s a pattern, you fall into it, and you just never leave.”
but my father walked out, and left me standing in a living room full of boxes,
containing his possessions.


And I held my ***** on my last 12 hour drive,
my last tree smeared, day dream.

Where the colors all come
together in different shades through each leaf.

I left the coffee machine
                          in a garbage bin out on the steps
with a sign that said
                                           "Don't bother, it's broken".

I have been in love with you since the moment
I realized we could sit in silence and eat a meal

Neither struggled for words or reason.

We just,
Sat alone in a booth, together.

My hand bumping yours , my eyes
Are locked on the freckle on your neck,





Loving you, loving her, while she loves him and
We sit in this triangle wishing for someone else.




Please hold my hand, like the nights we walk together late at night,
Those fleeting moments when I’m the girl you love.
Before you throw our feelings back into the dark.



Darling, I will always love those moments

When you’re body stopped me from

rolling out of bed.

And I wake up in the morning to your imprint in the sheets.