A History of Fires

6/7/2023 Part 1

I LOVE THE SMELL OF THE ANTHROPOCENE IN THE MORNING

THE LINE BETWEEN MEMORY AND DREAM

A History of Fires
Con/Jur/d, 6/7/2023

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 I had been telling a new friend
one I trusted, in the open vulnerable way
we were capable of then, without the work
winding and unwinding it takes now, about
how my 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 month 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 our 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
quiet, 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 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.

MEMORIES OF CYBERMEN

Much love,

Con/Jur/d, 6/7/2023