Was it you, who burned a city
At my fingertips?
I’ll blame it
On the rampaging fire wildflowers
Suffocating California.
Either way, I cannot breathe.

What haunts me?
It’s you, isn’t it.
The 12-33, code 12-56,
No help is coming,
“Refusal to comply” morphs to “missing persons,” reporting
The silence.
The screech, the blip
Of a scanner, seeing red,
Like I could hear the pain
Of a few thousand shaken children
Who lost
Their mothers
To a cloud of noxious smoke.

That’s what haunts me.
Isn’t it.
Children, charred and homeless,
Roaming crumbling streets.

That’s what haunts me.

Find community amongst the dives
where the masses drink
like sailors,
sink like ships.
The wayfarer's watering hole, where
spirits stain scripture
written on bar napkins
and patrons serve
as a quiet reminder,
that I sold my megaphone
and bought a butane lighter.

It left me burning. I expected hollow, but never the all together searing smoking pain. An eternal scalding I cannot shake. I envisioned my eyes aglow, instead my inside set ablaze

I meant to write about the fire
I swear I did
But you did something clever
And within you hid

As I watch it dance
I see only your hips
As I feel its warmth
I taste only your lips

If you're the fire
Then I'm the wood
That you devour
Just because you could

It's a pleasure to burn

This morning,
I am a mourning sunflower

Willing to burn than
lose my deity’s warmth

Who dares **** a child
by burning their yellow?

It shivers and weeps,
and in oblivion it sleeps