Fear and fire

dawn and early death I

There is something about fear,

(is it not nascent and mysterious?)
which enthralls me.
I do not understand it,
not quite,
and so I wonder in amazement
at the paralysis of the mind,
the twitching nervousness of the eyes,
the quick movements of the fingers around the nozzle.
Around the chairs soft wooden arms,
around the roundness of the knee,
bent in carelessness.
Fear is indeed a masterful creator of men and women,
unparalleled and grand.

Outside, the snow falls on mounds of ice.

Frozen, the children stand along an invisible line and pray.
I do not see them, though I know.
The windowpane is blurred and dirty,
and the shades are drawn.
Fear, nonetheless,
caresses my warm cheeks with its delicate claws,
and waits.
Where is she now, I wonder, where is she?
She is far gone, far gone.
The fear, though, stayed.
And all will soon be over.
February is close by
and the great fires will envelop the skies.
I do not understand it, not quite.
Not fully, not enough, not well.

These broken wings wont fly.

A song plays.
The whirring of the fan awakens me again.
The sun melts the ice and April is gone.
Where are the fires and where is the dawn?
I wonder where she is, but she is gone, far gone.
The fear is here, the fear stayed.
Take these broken wings and learn to fly.
A song kills.

The children pray no longer.

They do not stand along a line,
they do not raise their voices to praise the early death of dawn,
the early deaths.
Melted, I see their small faces become one with the pavement and the concrete
and the ice thats gone, far gone.
The fear has stayed and shall accompany me.
The room is stuffy.
The window is locked in its eternal isolating stance
and I cannot let fresh air in.
There is no fresh air,
its gone, far gone
and August is not long in coming.
I wonder where she is
and the nervous twitching of the eyes is soothing,
the quick movement of the fingers
around the nozzle and the chairs arms and the knee,
and the letter and the shards of glass,
the broken window letting the heat out,
the heat is gone, long gone.
October will soon be over and yet the fear shall stay.
Nascent and eternal,
birth is rebirth at its every whisper, at every cry.

Shall they be back, and take the bloodied rags?

The wounds are gone, long gone,
and snow is softly falling on the wet grass.
December with its holy days of past and present.
Shall they be born again,
the children with their faces contorted and in pain,
honoring the glory of the death of god,
the death of dawn and all the early deaths?
The cold comes in through the plastic sheet;
the shards of glass are scattered across the floor.
The heater clanks and calls me by my name.
Soon it will all be over, soon.
The fires and the skies will cry out,
bleed,
my hands shall lift the bodies of the dead
and I shall become one with them.

I wonder where she is,

but she is gone, long gone.
The fear has stayed with me, and yet,
the hand around the nozzle fears no more.

dawn and early death II

I stand and stare.

The sun is slow in rising.
I do not see his body among the trees.
Where is it now? Why has it gone?
The absence of him sends shivers down my spine
as branches sway obliviously and smile.
I lean against the flying colors.
The sky bleeds.
Its daughter dawn is born and dies its early death.
His body is no longer there among the trees.
It flew away.
With broken wings it took the rope and flung it far.
Little is left of its decay.
Teeth and a watch, perhaps, amidst the grass
and leaves,
the moss and chunks of rotting fruit.
Teeth, and a watch that does not tell time.
Where is his body now,
when dawn is dead and day appears to murder us by night?