A woman lights herself on fire again and again. Each time she thinks she can control the fire, or at least delay the progress of its flames. The little flames that singe the surface of her tiny blonde hairs and race up her arms and legs. When the heat rises, she takes a sip of ice water. Then a glass, a quart, a gallon. She breathes in to the count of ten and exhales slowly to the count of twenty. Next she counts to fifty. Then one hundred. She tries to blow out the flames one by one. Nights she runs into the streets like a human torch, crying out when she can not sleep. Days she visits therapists who prescribe pills. Pills and more pills. She collects them until she has hundreds, then thousands. Then she swallows them all. Oh yes, she takes them all at once. Nothing works. Her desperation fans the fire. Her desperation becomes the fire. Sometimes she even talks to the flames. Go away! Now! The fire never listens. It can’t. The fire keeps blazing inside her lips, guts, and groin. The fire knows what every fire knows. It must do only what she commands. It knows that Go away means, Come. Now! More! It has no choice but to fry her again and again.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Scenes Of The Mind
- Владимир Британишский – По волхову
- Post coitum omne animal triste est sive gallus et mulier by T. Wignesan.
- Олег Григорьев – Дачник
- A Thunderstorm In Town by Thomas Hardy
- Note to Reality by Tony Hoagland
- The Dance At Darmstadt poem – Alfred Austin
- To a Sky-Lark by William Wordsworth
- Erotic comics by Hanz Kovacq, porn comic books by known illustrators – continued
- See, how I love you by Vinko Kalinić
- Arms and the Man by Siegfried Sassoon
- Illusion by Mercedes Madrigal
- The Wold Waggon by William Barnes
- Федор Сологуб – Короткая радость сгорела
- Николай Языков – Элегия (Поденщик, тяжело навьюченный дровами)
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).