Burn! Burn!

We see houses as orange skeletons in dark neighborhoods on TV screens.
We see smoke rising and spreading like ink as if the earth were leaking.

As if the stuff of our world had released
all of its dark thoughts.

(The grasses giving in and going up.)
(The trees giving in and going up.)

Flames erasing Fall’s brilliance with a greater brilliance.
Racing up hillsides as an irresistible madness we all delight in.

Chanting “Burn! Burn!” under our breaths
with our fists clinched while the wind whips
everything into a frenzy.

We say, “Oh, that’s a pity!
But then want to run through a burning field
for our lives with everything we’ve got.

We say, “Oh, those poor people!”
But then conduct the fires from our couches
so that everything will burn and be alive again.

The headlines say “California is Burning!”
and we know the black landscapes are coming.
A world reduced to the bare bones of carbon
grays and shadow.

We want to stand on a bank or hilltop
and look out over a wasteland.

—A moon sparkling on a river,
dark ruins set against a night sky,
the last of the ashes floating down like snow flakes.

“Apocalypse isn’t so bad,”
we’ll tell ourselves and shrug.

Then move on to something else.

Unable to Touch

Yesterday we were each other’s enemy
and today it’s Sunday.

There’s no telling how we got here
—looking up at a blank ceiling
having been defeated once again.

The autumn light is waning
and everything is left at a distance.

So we get up
and go our separate ways.

You, to Church.
Me, to breakfast,
and to another day of recording
what is faded or is fading.

Something about how the trees move
this time of year.

Something about how the flags flap over the avenues
on the whimsies of the gusts.

Or about how things touch, then are unable to touch.

Later, we’ll come back together
and I’ll have scribbled you a few lines
and you’ll have prayed about what we said last night.

Rock Doves

Pigeon, you seem so restless
in all of your taking off and landing
and scuttling about.

You have gotten lost in alleyway life.
You have formed metropolis fixations.

Your little bird psyche
of subway and sidewalk
of rooftop and lonely sill.

Pigeon, have you forgotten your heritage
as symbol of the invisible?

Creature of city nooks.
Percher of our electric cords.

What are you a symbol of now?

I’ve heard neighbors call you
rats with wings.

I’ve heard women pinning up laundry
refer to you as termites of the sky.

When we have no one else, we let you
eat our crumbs.

When we consider you, it’s only
so that you won’t stain us
with your shit.

Pigeon, we no longer see you as dove
so tarnished,
so impure.

You are one of us now.

The Sun

Even though everything we see is lit by it
as we deliver ourselves to the world
or forget to, in all of the commotion
of our to-and-fro lives…

We don’t bother to look up.

We don’t bother to watch it burn
or listen for its song on its way up.

There is little interest in the sun
unless it is dying or in birth.

The red of beginnings and endings
forever drawing us, bringing us to pause…
at least for a moment.

And when evening comes
and everyone walks through the darkening blue of the dusk
all of us drown together
all of us are drawn together in the loneliness of our drowning
walking quickly to escape
what we don’t know.

Our hands on our faces as if in silent scream.
Our eyes darting back and forth with their whites showing like wild horses.

When the sun disappears,
we are left to our own lights
and the shadows they cast.

With everything neglected in ourselves rising to the surface
as we step on the gas to get to saloons
hoping to drown our drowning with the factory spirits
that are shipped in huge containers
and sold in units as the currency of night.

We don’t know why night is so painful
or why the sun is our savior…

Waiting for the mountains to catch fire in first light
and for everything to become unified as a single vision.

All of the surfaces accounted for.
All of the objects in their proper places.

Solid and sure of themselves
like a good argument.

Red and Gray

The hills are on fire.
The valleys and the mountains and the fields are burning.

And nobody asks what we did to cause this.
And nobody stops to ask what in us is on fire.

On some days the smoke drifts and covers the sun.
And the sun turns red like the fire is red
and the ashes rain down as a charcoal snow
and the people walking are stained by the sun
wearing white masks, drifting down streets
on bicycles.

Suddenly the earth is an alien terrain.
Suddenly we are all aliens on a hostile planet.

First, the wilderness dried out
because there was something missing from ourselves
as we went about our daily routines without moisture.

Then, the wildness of our hills leapt into flame
surrendering to the madness of firestorm
to the constant pressure of ignition from the sun.

Now, we are a city of ash
all uniting under a common skin of remnants.

Wilderness brought to our surface streets.

Grey billowing from the fires in our minds.

Specks of Wonder

The day came and went,
and we had many passing thoughts.

None of which we could keep.

We watched processions of people
gathering on fogy street corners
as if anticipating something
but then dispersing.

We roamed from one coffee shop to the next
discussing the mist and how it pleases us,
the way it erases the city,
—amnesia literalized, we said
and set adrift.

We would walk just to watch things appear from no where.

Each object strange and magnificent.

A statue to itself.
Doing what it does best.

Fitting perfectly into the cosmos,
then disappearing.

We marveled at the erasure of the world
and speculated about the continued existence of things
after they passed us by
or the ones we never thought of.

There were a thousand conversations we could’ve had
but only had one or two,

keeping the rest to ourselves
as mist seems do dictate,
shrouding street after street
until opened by our feet.

The fog came, then later it was gone
and there was nothing left to talk about.

With the fixtures of the city so plain and obvious.

—The mountains painfully present.
—The sky concealing nothing.

—The Great Unknown with nowhere to hide.

So we resumed our thinking about the obvious
going our separate ways
to our obvious tasks
with their obvious masks

without so much as a hint of grey
or a speck of wonder.