#campfire
If I were a painter
I would capture your likeness
When sat under yellow light
Playing games at the table
Or bathed in the flickering glow
Of a campfire underneath the night’s sky
Your skin a playing field
For different shades of red
So I might remember
With perfect clarity
Your contour that I could see
Sitting opposite of you
Apr 2, 2025
Apr 2, 2025 at 7:23 PM UTC
cackle hack drab dog
outer to the flames of the campfire
crackling
Nov 25, 2024
Nov 25, 2024 at 9:02 AM UTC
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch
Bang in the first measure
Came the congenital seizure
Skewing the first invention from scratch.
The campfire skied its sparks
Into the ghost-ridden void,
The skittish tchotchkes
Of paradox and entropy
Quirks and tics as dumb as bricks
Until a headstrong mongoloid
Started groping for rhythm
In the quavering spasms.
Oh, but it was a jawdropper
A bang-up tour-de-force
A horrorshow time-warper
Of Luke and Kirk and spice,
The good apple ran the table
Till the old goat hacked the matrix
And the young hawks did their mind-tricks
Of a tessellated cat’s cradle...
And paparazzi made the odyssey
From planets Claire to Z
To dish how cosmic *******
Trysted protomolecule
As the major ghosted ground control...
In all, a very large array
Of bingeworthy groundhog days.
Lukewarm confabulation
Of the smoking embers
From the essential tremor
Ceaseless oscillation
Between good cop and bad copper.
And the girl scouts chorus
With cheeks full of S’mores
“For all of your fables
Of hobbits and hubbles
And sabering at windmills
You will never untie the volition
Riddled into the convulsion,
Nor how the campfire kindles
Nor be one of us.
You will always ***** the pooch
Halfway to the paw-paw patch.”
Nurse Dipso-Etheromaniac
And Dr. Thorazine-Brainiac
Shoved their two-part invention
Cold turkey into the clockworks,
Cleft lip
Fetal eyes
Flipper-fingered
Riddled with the shakes
Cold-shouldered him to another dimension
Where muggles punk ETs,
And their whiskey wizards
Serve up mock elixirs
Not some hair of the dog to undistemper
The secondhand DTs,
His doggo superpower.
Bill Grogan’s goat
(Bam bam bam bam!)
Was feeling frisky
(Bam bam bam BAM!)
Chased three red skirts
Across the galaxy...
“I knew you were one of the ***** boys
But why do your hands shake like that?
They flipper and gibbet all over the keys”
The sour-smelling teacher spat.
And the mean girls echoed
With tongues of acid
“See how they lurch and squirm!
You will never get to the paw-paw patch
You will never find dear little Susie
She will never teach you to hulu
And you will never two-step
With dear old Johnny
With fists of wiggle worms.”
He touched off the fireworks
Torching all your pomp and cirque
In some skullduggery
Of **** and villainy.
I, Dropout
Outcast
Clonetrooper
Mutineer
Hitched a ride north of the watchtower
Where imperial walkers with hooves of ice
Stomped the land flat, and late-blooming
Summer never shakes the phantom menace
Of the winter that is always coming.
Somewhere in the interstellar distances
Of Kantian prairie perturbed by auroras
Like those night-blooming skyflowers
I glimmered back into existence.
I drank with wildings dropped with the dead
And vaped the contrails of the mad rocketeers
(Kid Rambo, Def Louie, Jedi Freddy and Manny
Steampunk Sal and Wig Out Johnny)
But never found sweeter ******
Than the next bridge to burn.
I, callow flamethrower
Of Shiva, the destroyer.
Marshall Gunpowder Jehoshaphat Miller
The bad apple of the force
Hatchet-faced and porkpied
Dead by ****** suicide
Born again old-schooler,
Packing halitosis
From ossified canon
Skywalked me down.
Gospeled me like Luke
And knee-capped me with a curse
Shame; the oldest mind-trick in the book.
I served out my prodigality
In Ludovico therapy
Which for a half-life, somewhat took.
Headlong into retrograde
I crashed the zero-sum arcade
Fed a quarter into the supercollider
And with some crazy tic of the wrist
Spooked the ***** trajectory
So it champagne supernovaed
And spat out the shabby ghost
Of a birthright lottery.
Thirteen golden statues.
But as the digits flipped
And the mission crept
As it does to one and all
Faster than a cannonball
I flashed back to renegade.
And the made girls chorused,
With cheeks full of Botox,
From their partial-view suites
And partner-track perks
Of bottomless cups
Of shut the **** up,
“You nearly made the grade, you!
But then you had to mouth off job-hop Hulk
Out, which finally betrayed you.
Now Security Guard Miller
Will escort you off the premises
For a reckoning with your nemesis
Regret, the silent killer.”
True, for a season I was a bluepilled moon
Marooned with space junk
And cypherpunk
Doomscrollers
Of deadend might-have beens,
Like the lunar sonata’s
Primal whisper of futility,
Until it tripolars
Into ultraviolent agitato
And hits escape velocity
Now loosed from orbit of the Goldilocks planet
I tumble through space in dumbstruck rapture
Of hurricaned stars and thundercloud nebula
I tremble in the thousand-parsec stare
Of the headless horde of dark riders
That stampede the stony hobbits,
Through the looking-glass of lightyears past
I see monstrous galaxies in ungainly copulation
Blushing Hiroshimas of atrocious release
And multi-sunned planets where misbegotten
Beings shudder into self-consciousness,
While I drift toward the event horizon
To be gobbled into the enigma
With a little gasp of gamma
Hammerstricken wires frisson.
Where the eleventh measure of the first invention
Counterclockwise corkscrews
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch,
After a very long array of groundhog days
My skeleton crew bunch into alignment
Like that hunch of spooky entanglement
Or just possibly like that eternal dissonance
Quelled by a quanta of true arrogance,
In a clockwork grotto
Grows a chrysalis F-sharp
Where fingers at last Goldilock
Into queasy equilibrium,
To my dumb surprise
The dark sac butterflies
And there is Susie
A little tipsy
On hard compatibilism,
With hips of pulsars
And hands of auroras
She hulus like the time warp
Not spasm without rhythm
But otherworldly vibrato.
Oct 31, 2024
Oct 31, 2024 at 4:04 PM UTC
I am black lace kissed with stardust
You are brilliant, well loved, faded tie-dye
Leaving the smell of campfires, afternoon naps
fresh showers, and sleepy smiles in your wake
Bonfire flames licking the space between our skin
Heart beat rhythms drive the music
To sway against our heartstrings
Connected.
Summer rain runs down us steaming
Feel your heat getting closer
warming my bones
melting my center
A shiver runs through me
So in tune, I pulse for you
Aching with the distance
That seems to always separate
Our good timing
Jan 7, 2024
Jan 7, 2024 at 1:12 PM UTC
Sit by the fire.
Drink with your friends.
Forget about the fact that you're a liar.
Maybe someday they'll know.
You can't help but admire
The faces who sit beside you.
You get teary thinking about when they expire.
But they can't see that.
They can't see your brain becoming rewired
Oct 6, 2023
Oct 6, 2023 at 6:17 PM UTC
I take comfort
from the greasy food
on my plate
hunter gatherer instincts
sated, my eyes search
for campfire flickering flames
and settle on the fish tank
I am zoned
replete
in the cavern
of my own space
my day over
I wait for the miracle
of sunrise
Nov 7, 2021
Nov 7, 2021 at 7:30 AM UTC
there's this boy,
dark hair, light-brown skin,
his eyes warm like a campfire,
with my melting marshmallow heart,
my fever for him grows, i love him,
squished between the graham crackers of guilt,
because i love her as well.
-lilac
Nov 9, 2020
Nov 9, 2020 at 3:58 PM UTC
Oh honey,
We are fireflies.
Dancing in the heat of a wild campfire flame.
Nothing can defeat us.
Sep 2, 2020
Sep 2, 2020 at 8:07 PM UTC
fat drips
fire, sausage crackles—flames
hiss of steam
Aug 13, 2020
Aug 13, 2020 at 2:24 PM UTC
I sit by the fire
And think of all I've known;
While I envy the ground that's dryer,
Than my bleeding heart of stone;
Some days I feel colder,
Than the winter air around me;
And feel the crushing weight of a boulder,
With no way of breaking free;
I no longer have any hope
Of getting out of this on my own;
If only someone would help me cope
So I wouldn't feel so alone;
In the very end,
I know what I truly desire;
Of having a companion,
Who will also sit by the campfire;
I sit by the fire
And stare at the embers;
Thinking of all I desire
On that cold night of December.
Aug 19, 2019
Aug 19, 2019 at 9:39 PM UTC
It's time to light the lanterns
Keep them lit real bright
For someone's out there hunting
On this the darkest night
Each Halloween folks say
A creature breaks the veil
And runs off with a child
And therein lies our tale
Keep watch when you are camping
Or just walking in the park
You don't know if it's watching
To take you far into the dark
They say it is a moss man
Made of spanish moss and sticks
Light and ninja quiet
You don't know just who he'll pick
The story tells of many
Who've gone missing through the years
Some say it's just a legend
To play upon our fears
Look around the circle
See the person close to you
Hold their hand real tight now
Before they're taken too
Feel a breeze so soft and gentle
Hear the wind there in your ear
Take care now when you hear it
You don't want to disappear
A creature from the dark times
As old as time they say
A thousand years or older
Still, it's hunting to this day
Feel that tickle on your ankle
Hear that twig break there behind
Is it coming now to get you?
Or is it only in your mind
Keep the fire burning
If you are camping in the wood
And have somebody watching
For when it's out, it is no good
Do you listen to it's whispers?
Do you try to run away?
Protect yourself with light now
And live to see another day
It's waiting and it's watching
From a distance or real near
Is that the animals there moving
Or is it him that you may hear
No one know where he is hiding
Those taken, never seen
You don't know he's out there watching
Hiding in his coat of mossy green
They say it once was human
But, through magic, is no more
The moss man, is he legend
Or is the moss man local lore
Light the lanterns, and sleep tightly
Make it to the new days sun
Count all those around you
For tonight,you may lose one
Feel a tickle, hear a whistle
Hear a twig, or gentle voice
Sleep tightly or keep watching
It's up to you, you make the choice
Goodnight Campers.
Aug 10, 2019
Aug 10, 2019 at 7:13 PM UTC
It is for no ill will, no caprice on the part of fire, but for love. Man wakens fire from sleep, feeds her, cares for her, and keeps her alive. And so she smiles on him with friendly light, warms him, whispers to him mysterious songs, and drives away all that would sting, bite, harass, or harm. For as man loves fire, so fire loves man and delights in his company, all the more in wild and lonely places.
Jul 3, 2019
Jul 3, 2019 at 10:38 AM UTC
picture us,
lawn chairs and faces black, like kettles left
out go our hands and dark palms
For now we, the migrants
our knuckles on city doors not ours
humbled to our toes this star-less cold
dining room dreams, now on fire, mercy our new coat
neighborly faces take hands
washing them over buckets though nothing
there was no wall
Jan 5, 2019
Jan 5, 2019 at 3:42 PM UTC
Orange is a color to be recognized.
It is the color of a pumpkin with a demon surprise.
On Halloween it is all carved out with jagged teeth.
Take the pumpkin it is all carved out, a top, and a candle underneath
Orange is the color of Autumn.
When the leaves turn color is it not awesome?
They fall to the ground, a plucked feather.
The season of Autumn, what time could be better?
It is also the color of a basketball.
The seasons usually start in autumn as well.
Dribble and pass, drive, or shoot, your choice
When the buzzer beater is made the fans show their voice.
Orange is the color of a citrus fruit known by the same name.
It is also part of breakfast if you drink you could rise to fame.
Because of the old saying of “early to bed..”.
Can make you in the morning quick to lift your head.
Orange is also the color of a campfire;
With the provoked embers ready to inspire;
The tails that are scary;
With monsters that seem a little too hairy.
As you can see the color orange can inspire a great many things.
When you think of it I hope it inspires dreams.
Orange is the color for your creation.
Wherever you live no condemnation.
Sep 17, 2018
Sep 17, 2018 at 10:17 PM UTC
The fire fills the wood
It's orange embers glowing-
summer smells so good.
May 9, 2018
May 9, 2018 at 9:51 PM UTC
With steel and flint
We strike a spark
Our hope,
to burn away the dark
A simple spark
Not all it seems
To ward off fears
rekindle dreams
Shield it well
And give it air
Feed it's needs
And take good care
And from that spark
A flame will grow
To heat the soul
And rid your woe
Feb 27, 2018
Feb 27, 2018 at 7:54 AM UTC
(campfire poetry) WE ARE FIRE, WE COULD BE WATER
Flickering, fluttering, licking all it touches
Through another log it goes;
Spreading warmth, consuming everything,
Atoms and particles
Splitting and shifting in throes.
Fascination, energy at its purest.
An open flame, made malleable
By the hands that feed it or quench it.
There is no greater exhibition
Of something as infallible
In its awe-inspiring might
It is an eternal fight
Between that which is to be consumed
And that which is to be construed
Into something new, and different.
And so, we are one with the element
That awes us and terrifies us at the same time.
Our life is built
On the graveyard of our ancestry;
Our homes are powered
Through the sacrificial burning of past lives.
The food we eat is life from our perspective,
Yet it is death itself for all else.
The trees we cut down, the animals we torture,
The lives we take, the populations we uproot;
Our way of life is an endless reenactment
Of an ant being crushed by a boot
No life is sacred, all can be loot.
We are fire, we could be water;
A more gentle element than most.
A soothing, balming agency
Like the overachiever who dares not boast.
Both are harmful in excess,
Both can be destructive,
Only one is restorative.
And so, we choose to be fire;
We torch, burn, consume,
Until all that is around us
Transitions to its post-human state.
A lifeless mass of black and grey,
An emotionless, bottomless decay.
Alas, as these ruminations grind to a halt,
I find myself desperately looking for the fault
That has created the chasm that brought us here.
Where exactly did we go wrong?
How did we go from being masters of our fate
To this dark, ominous presence
That shrouds all there is?
The Renaissance, the Enlightenment,
and all the revolutions that were and will be;
The great men and women who dedicated their lives
For a better future.
To you, we should apologise - although it wasn't all in vain,
There still is a thousand-mile journey
One that has not gone very far.
And so, we choose to be fire,
When we could be water...
Jan 5, 2018
Jan 5, 2018 at 4:47 AM UTC
Sitting by the fire, here we think,
Life is on the brink but all we have is us,
So why worry about wars,
when you can get look up at the stars at 1 am
teach your peer about holes in our reality,
gossip of current rumors, future tropes,
past trips and falls, runs and crawls.
Why fall when you can jump?
Oct 27, 2017
Oct 27, 2017 at 10:23 AM UTC