11 Page writing exercise

6/10/20223 Part of which, unusually, is going behind pay wall

Y’all know I’m not a fan of paywalls — But this rough-drafted monstrosity is going partially behind in order to preserve the pretense of being ‘unpublished’ — If you’d like to see it in its entirety and can’t spare the yearly cost — please lmk and I’ll see what can be done — PART 1 was written in rough a few days ago

I’ll skip the end here at the beginning — and because of length, this will be best viewed on the website or in the APP

Much love,

Con/Jur/d, 6/10/2023

A History of Fires
Con/Jur/d, 6/5/2023 thru 6/10/2023

Part 1

The Mystery of Certainty
eluded us, Mother calls us aside
in the green/blue/yellow/white
kitchen, depending on the memory
and its depth, mostly skirting
the black and orange color scheme
when our synthetic flannel

BURST

into flames by the brown electric
stove and I smelled/saw the shadows
outlined and the smoke becomes
a universe of roll, roll, 

PAIN

Long before those burns on the carpet
we were maybe 8? we were maybe 12?
thinking about it now, we were almost 60
and the current conflagrations lend
credence to Frost’s first choice, before
his reincarnation to die again in ice

And we had been telling a new friend
one we trusted, in the open vulnerable way
we were capable of then, without the work
winding and unwinding it takes now, about
how our scarred hand and dwarfed pinky
became to be, before we learned to hide it so
well our first passionate-intimate didn’t notice 
for 3 months and awoke with a start, making
the familiar

CREAK

“What happened to your hand?”

and we had been telling this friend a story
about a late night under clear starry skies
not yet filtered by particulates and insomniac
lighting, surrounded by my mother’s girl guides
telling stories, laughing with Latvian accents
and we were playing and spinning, spinning,

SPINNING

and 

SUDDENLY

down among the embers

crying and coughing
crying and coughing

“That’s not what happened,” she said
quietly, so they couldn’t overhear,

“You were 3, still in diapers and I told you, 
“Get your Father for lunch,” and he was burning out
the stump in the backyard, when we lived on the hill
off Blossom Road, and you had only one friend, the one
next door because the 

ROARING

river of cars blocked you from laying with kids your age and you
went into the yard with lilac bushes and the buried lost treasures
and we heard you screaming, screaming,

SCREAMING

and we didn’t know what happened
you were in the coals alone
in the coals alone
alone”


later, under more extensive questioning
it became apparent, our recall was based on 
a dream, not a deception, a simple delusion
of certitude, a mistake made over and over
again and

AGAIN.


Quenching 1.5
Con/Jur/d, 6/8/2023

The sound of squelching
quenching, the red eyes
hands suddenly dimmed
We’re discomfited, is this 
how we’ll end? our vital 
roars extinguished, quiet

fecundity reversed

exsanguination, carbon
ashes slough to the mud
back, back to before the 
word, before the breath, 
before the wet welcoming
before organics combined
reacted, compounded into
into these: 

Flashy Fleshy Flowering
            BLOOMS

back before the light beneath
the darkest night, back to 
before the inferno, the inferno
without source, flames without
beginning or end, seeking 
something that felt and fed
and burned and burned and

           BURNED

so fierce it became matter
it became you, it became us
poorly hidden, the in-between
between everything, waiting 
to be released, to burst
forth, to be bright, to
rage, to reincarnate

with a vicious virtuous
       ELEMENTAL
        HISSSSSS


We Are Born Dragons 
                2