Burning | A Poem

 

When I was young,

I found myself obsessed with the idea of starting a fire

with nothing but a magnifying glass and sunlight,

for what purpose, I am not sure I knew then.

But currently possessed with morose hindsight

I like to imagine it was for the creation of art

and nothing more.

But hidden in the strange cultivated rows of my unseeded

subconscious I know I salivated at the imagined chaos and

my mind floated on the oxygenated clouds of whimsical desire.

There was so little of my twisted hard drive

held in the vices of learned experience then

and still

I croaked out the manic laughter with

a violently sputtered guttural foundation

scoffing at the idea

of chasing the current,

even if I could not wrap the peeled skin

of my mind about the un-reasoned why

given the built claustrophobia

the brick and mortar walls

obstructing the circumstance of my upbringing.

Maybe I felt a nearing release

saw it within incendiary rage

craved the warmth of flame near flesh

and the taste of spark upon my tongue

maybe I saw opportunity in my own tinder bones

inflicted immolation

so a therapist might file away my ashes

in a binder they keep for their own records labeled

“Misidentified stability”

The adolescent me was brash in his ideals

and no one could see the tears

soaked up by the sponge of his pillow at bedtime,

leaking from a soul lacking nutrients

he could not know he was starved of.

I sought escape in the violent way

only a boy raised by masculine rage

he was privy to in the midnight stillness of suburban isolation

escape by way of an ignited match box coffin-

That is why a boy,

seen to some as young and naive

obsessed over flame and quietly became addicted

to the burning of his own skin.