Ghazal for the Indescribable

I’m standing on a hill of burnt grass, inhaling hell fire.

It’s crackling under my feet like shards of glass. I can’t repel fire.

Above me the darkness is an ice cold meat locker, dead bodies

wafting through cracks in the door, searching for shell fire.

Branches burn, bark flakes from the trunk like old paint fleeing

a cracked house. Desperate rain falls so hard it sounds like nutshells. Fire.

Thunder claps like bass screaming from concert speakers.

Surrounded by dead zombie strangers. I yell, “fire!”

This despair is a jacket I wear. It feeds off my half-hearted prayers.

It tries to lay next to me in bed. Rebel fire.

At school it causes me to be misunderstood. I wallow and walk the halls

like a house of bricks is wobbling on my back, staggering under this shrapnel. FIRE.

Like Michelangelo's artwork whispering his name, I was alive and moving

when he tried to make me his personal art. Body burned by a swell of fire.

Reading is my outlet and I will sing so the pieces can come back

together. I can teach myself to say, farewell fire.