Lighter
The girl rolls a lighter in her pocket, running a fingertip across the rough letters etched on its side. "It was a pleasure to burn."
She finds the phrase haunting, though her father says it was a quote from an old book, a play on words of sorts...
No.
He said it was a quote. Before he left.
He was supposed to go on a two day "buisness trip".
It had been to two years and counting since she had last seen her father. Her traitor of a father
She felt her lip trembling tratariously, tears filling her eyes.
DAMMIT. Her father had left, and there was nothing she could have done to stop him. Hell, she couldn't even control her own tears. Pathetic.
Desperate for control, even if it is only over a flame, she fishes the lighter from her pocket. Then, an idea sparking at the back of her mind, she reaches a tentative finger under her matress. There. The tattered corner of an aging photograph.
Her father sat there, bouncing her as an infant on his knee. He looked so happy. Content, even. She used to pull this photo out and sob over it, wondering what she did that made him leave.
She chuckles sadly at her own naievity. She was a child then. Now she knows better.
With a sharp crack the lighter ignited, a fragile flame licking the night air. She watches the glossy photo paper buckle and heave, her fathers grin twisting, the center caving inwards, giving the man in the photo an expression of pure horror. What would he think if he could see her now, burning the last photo of him in the household? She found that she didn't particularly care.
The photo blazed brilliantly for a moment, but soon there was nothing left to burn but a pile of ashes. The flame died. The girl let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding, and wept. Not tears of grief this time, but those of release.
The man she once had called father? He was dead to her. And from the ashes of his corpse, she would rise again- a phonix in her own right.
Soul Fire
I see your crimson glow, baby. The warmth running through your veins put me on edge.
I’m not ready to fall, yet. I got some healing to do.
A journey to the past,
to accept my mistakes,
to understand my faults,
to embrace my insecurities and
imperfections.
I’m learning to love myself
and I have you to thank for that.
The fiery soul of yours rescued me from floating aimlessly in the blackness of the galaxy.
too cold, baby.
But your hands warmed up parts of me I thought were dead.
long dead.
Your soul fire embraced me from the inside out like a forest in a blaze
soothing
dangerous
exhilarating
You must be the daughter of Hephaestus, Greek God of Fire
Raining your firestorm down, filling my core to the brim.
it sinks
and it feels
like home.
We have this connection
There's something between me and you
I know you feel it too.
Constantly pulling us together,
constantly pulling us back to each other.
Can we please just admit,
we both feel it?
I know we're both aware
and I didn't realize until I started to care.
maybe it's a force
trying to lead us on the right course
or maybe a spark
building up to get rid of the dark.
about to burst into a flame
This is something I don't think we can tame.
Soon enough it'll be a fire
and I don't think very easily, It'll tire.
I don't think I can find the words to write
me and you just seem so right.
I have a fire in my heart...
I have a fire in my heart, it burns to me
There is a lot of injustice in my homeland and free
dying justice is as rotten,
like a tormented and dried tree
I have a fire in my heart, it burns to me
Our people have great troubles:
people have gone away in search of work
people with disabilities need money
and the price is expensive
I have a fire in my heart, it burns to me
In my homeland there is no human value
people die from hard work
people die on a monthly basis
I have a fire in my heart, it burns to me
officials are arrogant, rulers are corrupt
they will crush the people
they are deceiving the people
I have a fire in my heart, it burns to me
I can never write these things in my own country!
they will pursue me
they scare me ...
I have a fire in my heart, it burns to me
i love my country but not people
Don't call me a traitor!
it's all about my heart!
it's a people's pain!
but ...
our people are cowards
this is what the tyrannical government has done to them
Survive, O dependent Uzbekistan !!!
Passing Through (Highway Poem #1)
Glass forest trickles droplets
onto northbound Vermont 9.
Entire hillsides, crystalline,
both east and west,
glisten in the barely warm.
Three miles from the town
with little shops and
beds and breakfasts where
a crossing guard halted
us for a peacoated woman
walking to church,
one mile from the covered bridge
spanning the stony creek,
between two farmhouses each
with signage promising fresh
syrup and cheddar,
I observed McKay’s Used Car Lot.
He wore a red hooded sweatshirt,
around thirty with goatee, and on a
tiny balcony, the type one
associates with a Swiss chalet
overlooking a lake, not
an architecturally nondescript house
overlooking a dozen 80,000 mile Chevys
parked over brownish snow.
He leaned on the rail, smoking a cig,
surveying his domain with his
small fire held in his lips,
feeling suave or scornful—
I cannot know.
A trap is a getaway minus choice.
Fire on the mountain
“Will you hand me the bag of marshmallows? Please? Before you eat the rest of the remaining four ?!,” Jasmine said to her sister Evelyn as she reached over her chair trying desperately to not knock over the bottle of Boone’s Farm tucked in between her legs. Evelyn tossed her the crinkled up bag she had been hogging by the fire for the last hour.
“ Dang! You and that pitchers arm! You know I’m right here!”
“ Jasmine, calm down. You get upset over the littlest crap lately. You know I was just playing!
“ Yeah. Well guess what? I’m not in the mood to play.” She turned her head and looked off into the distance. Wondering when she would get to talk to her boyfriend again. She was a senior this year and this was supposed to be the beginning of an amazing and unforgettable decade. But nothing was going as planned so far.
It was New Years Eve and both her and her younger sister were bundled up from head to toe in cozy matching gingham thermals & puffy insulated ski coats to match. But they weren’t at their usual destination, a ski resort they had been going to every year since they were babies. This year their parents had opted to surprise them with a weekend get away to a secluded cabin in the mountains much to their disappointment. And here they were, decked out in top of the line ski apparel with no sign of life or usable technological devices anywhere in site. So they were trying to make the best of their less than desirable situation, as their parents remained inside getting lit by the minute, leaving them to the fire by the wayside. The smoke kept drifting towards Jasmines face, smothering her words as she coughed violently with each syllable out of her ruby red lips.
“Holy crap this blows!” She said, lifting the sticky burnt concoction into her mouth. Trying not to jab herself with the pointy stick holding it effortlessly.
Her sister nodded her head in agreement. “Yeah, the only thing nice right now is this fire.” She enjoyed the soothing sounds of the crackling, popping and sizzle of each flame that ignited itself out the little pit in front of them.
“ Think they would notice if we hitchhiked out of here!?”she said exposing a horrible imitation of someone hutch hiking.
“ Why would we do that when we could take the Family Tahoe?” She said flicking her long blonde hair out of her face.
“I don’t know how to drive but you do! I say let’s go! Let’s get out of here!! She started to jump around in circles around her.
“ Omg! Sit down Evelyn!! We aren’t doing something like that so shush it!” She said.
Sometimes her sister got on her nerves. She found herself to be quite reluctant in giving into yet another one of her sister’s crazy air brained schemes. The last time she did that they were both grounded for 2 months.
“ I just got my license and my cell phone back from the last time I was grounded. So that would be a big fat no!! She said to her sister with frustration.
The both sat their staring into the crimson and gold fire, flames shooting in all directions. They were in trance and were down to half a bottle of Boone’s, zero smokes, no source of communication and lastly they had eaten all of their marshmallows. All four to be exact.
They sat their in silence for what seemed like half and hour when suddenly they both saw in the near distance that the entire sky was lit up with a fierce fiery glow.
“ Omg! The woods!! They are on fire! And that’s not that far from where we are at Jasmine!! Go get dad!”
Jasmine ran to the cabin, pounding heavily on the oak door as hard as her little fist could pound and yelling at the top of her asthmatic lungs. She could feel the heat from the fire coming down from the mountain top at this point. She couldn’t get her parents to answer and the door was locked shut.
She ran back to her sister, grabbing her. Come on! We’ve got to get them to wake up! I bet their drunk asses are passed out.
They both pounded on the door with relentless effort. The fire wasn’t backing off anytime soon. They could see it creeping it’s way to their cabin and they both knew it would only be a matter of a few minutes before they too were engulfed in its inferno.
They grabbed a large boulder adjacent to the cabin and threw it into the kitchen window. Pieces of glass were now tangled within their hair and stuck in the crevices of their flannels but they didn’t care. They had to save their parents.
Evelyn being the smaller one climbed through the little cabin window, being careful to not let any of the broken pieces cut her as she made her way inside. In a matter of a few minutes she managed to unlocked the door to let her sister in where they shook their parents awake and out of their drunker stupor. Their eyes were in a glaze & heavily blood shot. They paid absolute zero attention to the problem at hand and could care less.
“ Check this out sis!” She picked up two empty bottles of expensive vodka, holding them up in the air as if they were trophies.
. “This explains their hesitation. They are toast.”Their parents didn’t care and laid back down and told them to go away.
“I will drag mom and you get dad!” She said to Jasmine.
“Got it! I will do whatever it takes.” But before they could even get out the door with them they noticed the fire was only a few feet away from their cabin.
They looked at one another and prayed in unison. “ Dear God please help us out of here!” “ And as if God heart them right then and there, a fireman had showed up outside, yelling for them to open the door. He was their to save their lives from the FIRE.
When the Heat Kicks In
Rooms were 10 by 10 by 10. Each of us stood in our square foot, trying not to touch fellow occupants. We’re not told how many cubicles there are like this. “Thousands,” I speculated. My neighbor to the right laughed and said, “Millions.” A fellow in background grumbled, “Billions!”
Who knew?
We stood for minutes, hours, days.
“Ready?” a voice asked from outside the walls. “Soon,” another voice whispered.
“Soon?” I pondered. “How soon?”
Then I wondered, “How soon for what?”
Each of us began to sweat. Beginning at the brow. Eyes burned from
body-salt. Underarms generated streams of drip-drops. Chests, too.
Body heat from 100 naked men and women warmed up the room. Humidity gave weight to the air. Our nostrils twitched. Throats gagged. Stomachs churned. Knees buckled. Legs ached.
“Ready!” the voice declared.
“Acknowledged,” the other voice whispered.
Temperatures rose. Sweat increased. Discomfort transitioned into pain.
“I knew it’d be hot, but not like this!” someone in the corner joked.
Several people laughed. Some giggled. Not me. Why? As a youngster, my job had been to stoke the furnace at our old stone house. I’d watched as slumbering embers got oxygen and fuel. Hot coals burst into flame and spikes of dancing fire reached brutal heights. Heat would nibble at my eyebrows and turn my cheeks red.
“Fire away!” the voice shouted.
Hell was open for business—and we were its first customers.