And the world was burning on its curling ashen fringes,
echoing pink-orange in the fuzz blue afternoon sky,
our red rusted hood swallowed the flashing yellow strips.
Just us, our only photo now, on the road,
leaning back, sweatshirt arms baggy and gray round shoulders,
the dark floating hair on my exposed wrist,
even in the black-and-white half-century haze,
our faces hungry young shadows,
your crazed, swelling blue eyes only black coals on paper,
all just after that point where dirt roads pave,
screaming bounces of country dips become dust clouds billowing to hide
wooden barns rotting and old wire fences,
and the sagging gray wood porches,
ripples centralized in the black knots,
And suddenly smooth, gliding glance back at fog
and questions where?, where to?, what is the why?, dissolved for the going,
the past tan in the rotting rural light.
A sudden city rounds the windows, bubbles caging
us from our rapid dreams.
A picture before the blood, how I swallowed every string dangling from the heart
until it became mine, burning, ripping through my chest and screeching through my lungs, reverberating against New York alleys.
Too much to contain in any one.
Before your velocity, your crash into the limitations of light,
your bodily heart to your human heart,
so your sideburns shortening far too quickly on
empty Mexican railroad tracks.
And now all falling flames and afternoon’s dust-
The gone,
Wasted and ruined, replaced by soaking superstore youths,
and me a drunken star,
just the picture that froze us keeps the deep rotting ruts in your face hidden,
the carved canyons of your brain behind a face too old for hours, and only hours old,
an image stabbing drooping pins on the cheeks and eyelids so we always see
What we always saw
And I only see now how some words spark, but some want to burn.