How Fire Becomes Fire
a poem
There are wounds that won't heal, no matter how well that we mourn. There are splinters that can't be removed. Time burns and burns and eventually reduces all of us to cinders. Everything that you hold sacred can become profane. Listen. Listen, please. I don't want to speak of the day when you fled me but I loved you and that love lingers and lingers and lingers and lingers. I still hold you sacred— you're a relic still worshipped— you're a redwood mask fragmented into ten thousand splinters— you're ten thousand splinters buried in my skin—you're ten thousand splinters that fire has reduced to cinders— you're ten thousand cinders that can't ignite again but they still burn and burn. I don't want to speak of the day when you fled me but, here I am, forcing myself to speak under these interrogation lights that irradiate and linger— forcing myself to proclaim my innocence. But, wait, if I still hold the truth sacred then I must confess that I was the first to smash my redwood mask against the stone. I created the first five thousand splinters and the first five thousand cinders that burn and burn and burn and burn. Or, if more truth be told then let it be known that I caused the first five thousand and one burns. I don't believe that I deserved to be abandoned but I did turn some sacred things into the profane. I don't want to speak about my sins of omission and commission— about the splinters that I've left in you— but I'd guess that your sorrow still lingers when you think about me, if you think about me. How is it that every good fire becomes cinders and how is it that every good cinder— every ember of life— becomes dirt upon dirt? These questions do more than linger. They burn and burn and burn. I don't want to speak about loss. These nouns and verbs feel like splinters between my teeth. Poets love to think their poems are sacred but I can't always tell the difference between the sacred and the profane. Can rage be sacred? Can bitterness be a balm? Can I dig my hand into the cinders and pretend that my burns are hieroglyphics? Can I speak in tongues? Can I linger in the temple after the last hymns have been sung? Can I wrap my soul in redwood vestments and smash myself against the altar until I'm splintered by faith and lack of faith? O, I loved you once and that love has splintered and been reduced to cinders that spontaneously combust and become new fires. O, these new fires linger, O, this grief lingers. But, even as these flames burn your name into my skin, I must speak the most difficult truth about grief. O, I've learned that grief is necessary. O, grief must be carried like holy scripture. O, I've discovered that grief, however naked, however created and translated, is always sacred.
Wow, that piece of the poem does stand on its own. Now you got me thinking! On Substack, I think I've published a lot of stuff that'll need more editing. Probably not major revision but detail work, for sure. So I think of Substack as a working lab, I guess. Or maybe like a soft opening for a restaurant or a Broadway play. And, of course, there's also a lot of stuff that is solidly done. As far as submitting to magazines, I'll send stuff when editors ask for it. But I haven't published in magazines nearly as much as other writers who have a career like mine. But I think they need to be much more ambitious and dedicated to publishing in magazines because of their jobs in academia. Publish or perish, right? I don't have to worry about that because I'm not a professor. Here's the great thing about Substack though: Thousands of people read this poem. That would not be the case for any literary magazine except for maybe The New Yorker. My poems are reaching a far larger audience here.
great poem. great line:
"Can I dig my hand
into the cinders
and pretend that my burns
are hieroglyphics?"