from infernal tongues devouring
wood and concrete edifices,
to the brief yet joyful life spark
from a match lit as if to breathe
soft and tender so that a solitary candle
may flame a vigil against cold and night,
i have seen and endured those lips,
yet none proved to be a feast
more than the fires of friendship
like the one we named ours:

solitary embers fated to a lifetime of wait
until we allowed them to share names,
speak secrets and whispers desires,
fingers like the poles of stars
joined together as it peeled away the covers
wrapping our pains, tragedies, and shames.

yet even as i desired for each grain of sand
be allowed to trace the shape of our feet
while shore and sea lined each kiss,
i did not forget the fate of fires.

even now i can still feel the warmth
as if your hand was still pressed
against my own, ghost friction
from the fiction of our devotion
i now allow the wind to claim
for it flows into them, by their names,
to scatter these ashes away.

Eleven to you
Star-crust in de stijl courts
Silhouettes and shadows
Speed boats race around the lake

On and on and on and on and
Guilty pleasures and guilty moldy blues
Sandwiches on the weekends
Pasta and pesto or gnocchi every other day too

Common mysteries follow the bayou
Heavy heads laden in niello swamps
Does acrostics in the daytime
Pleasures herself with crosswords on her days off

Sacks of coffee, potatoes and ivory- beer at 5am
Three fingers lay across the stitch
This needlepoint is something good
No one died but someone could

Heavy on the hops, melancholy Wednesday's
Miracles in wrestling Russian masters
Thwarting automobiles without their governors
Faster and faster they go
Growing faster and faster they show

L** osing people.
I gniting fires.
F ailing sometimes.
E nduring forever.

Talk to me about flowers and fires.
The orchids
of our collected youths
are bleeding into rose water
and being smashed into books.
For a little look
like a picture stretched under a slide
hiding, elfin to run back away from us.

In the hearth of us we wonder
what the charcoal will draw next.
Sticks on the banks of the styx
In it’s flicking midst
I can almost see
the little beat-less heart
in the center of the cherry.
It’s like it’s still held still in pursed lips.

In a falling little flame
accidently spilling it.

Out in Saturday mornings.
Out of school
so sliding in our nose rings.
Skiving by lying
with fist rubbed eyeballs.
The swell,
Then the classic sweetness
of the re-sleep.

Marker pen graffiti.
Feeling like elitists
because we don’t like elitists.
Defeatist is in right now, love's yet a fable.
(Planets are *****) on physics tables,
and writings on my hands,
but **** it man,
I won’t remember them, anyway.

Blurry nameless kisses
tasting like French lager,
or is that me?
Bellybutton shots.
Love at a coin toss
or against a brick wall was at it's best.
But there’s room for two
in this tent full of burn-holes.

Iron maiden.
never paid but
in microphone coldness
on the lips.
Lifted on the fix.
Giving the week in a night
and taking the night for a week,
with velocity.

Headbanger’s neck on
the pen-bottle ****, being used,
being used up.
Swimming against the river.
Golden Virginia,
Sobranies in the bus shelter.
And as the day's screen goes over
we still kept the bonfire
running in the rain.

That's what talks to me.
I'm laying back,
but moving forwards,
involuntarily.

the fires of an august sun,
the leaves a dream  
of shadows.

Fires in ditches and fields with
Newspapers, boxes, and dry grass
As our accessible anthracite;
Once smouldering enough on its own feet
To become its own source is when
The limbs were stripped and introduced;
Torn from trees or salvaged from
The outlying waste - they fed the
Crackle - spitting whispering embers skywards.

As children with little sense, our noise
Was all we could offer to appease
Wayward youth's disorder.
The crippled heat was secondary,
But to watch things burn was valuable;
A ring of lives held tenuous.

One thing I came to know
From the nights we gathered in droves is
That within this life of loose bonds and swells
I soak in the hungry gloam.