Tamed Torrents

Click. Spark. Light The dark. Just keep the flame from engraving its mark. The viscous amber, the salty indigo Are able enough to crawl up your arms. They can feast on your festering flesh And move as a pack of hungering harm. But for now, you have caged the beasts In a plastic pocket of potential, And you raise their tamed torrents To the chemicals poised between your parted lips. Yes, your shaking fingertips Will instead embrace danger in the form of stumbling smoke— To inhale rebellion and ecstasy In a world that defines ecstasy As waking to the stomach-turning screams of an alarm, Conforming to the wants of a green-backed power That is not a god That barely satisfies the surface of a craving For belonging, For being, For giving… That displaces the hopes of the millions of the “rest” For the survival of the “best,” And falling asleep knowing that you are as enslaved As the fire you have contained And sold for a dollar and some change. But in the crevices of your memories And secondary school textbooks, You have proven that some change can in fact be afforded. For like the rusty coins you ache and bleed for And like the true gods you aspire to be, Fire reveals its infinite faces And exchanges its hangman’s hood For a crown dipped in copper love. You have been taught not to play with our burning form, Yet we are the only hope of keeping you warm.