Skip to main content

Flagrant

 Sharing with The Sunday Muse #217. Come be part of the conflagration. :) 


Oh, they called the mob to celebrate
But only the fire heard
They called the mass to congregate
But only the dry grass bowed

A conflagration
Called to prayer
Hungry for light
Hungry for air

Oh, they called the mob celebrate
Wearing flames in their hair
They called the mass to congregate
Faceless in the burning air. 

Greetings and salutations. I'm not sure what to say--we're not celebrating the 4th this year (not that I'm prepared to cede one holiday to the authoritarian idiots in charge of our state, but our grass is still dry from the heat and we have a dog terrified of fireworks...so we're celebrating by bunkering down and watching Howling 2 at the gleefully deranged suggestion of my sibling) and otherwise I've turned our dead corn plants into the basis for this year's Camp NaNo project...it's turning into a weird year, the kind of year where I'm reading more horror than normal and fictional dragons are turning toothy and serpentine and much hungrier. Camp NaNo is going to be...creepy. As summer camp, at times, should be. :) 

Hope you have a good holiday & summer season!

-- Chrissa

Comments

  1. FireblossomJuly 2, 2022 at 1:33 PM

    Having lived in south Texas for 6 years a long while ago, I cannot even imagine what the atmosphere there must be in 2022. I'd be afraid to show my LGBTQ face, which I guess is what they want. I love your poem.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Carrie BurttJuly 2, 2022 at 2:14 PM

    Your poem holds a heat and power like fire itself my friend! Love this! Yes I am with you on the hunkering down. 💙

    ReplyDelete
  3. ✿July 2, 2022 at 3:09 PM

    "they called the mob to celebrate
    But only the fire heard"

    That opening is fabulous.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Gillena CoxJuly 3, 2022 at 1:19 AM

    Fantastic wordsmithing Chrissa
    Happy Sunday

    much💚love

    ReplyDelete
  5. Keith's RamblingsJuly 3, 2022 at 6:22 AM

    Picture and words in perfect harmony. Well done.

    ReplyDelete
  6. robkistnerJuly 6, 2022 at 12:31 PM

    So strong Chrissa — excellent! 🙂

    ReplyDelete
  7. purplepeninportland.comJuly 6, 2022 at 5:49 PM

    "Oh, they called the mob to celebrate
    But only the fire heard
    They called the mass to congregate
    But only the dry grass bowed"

    Excellent and powerful, Chrissa!
    I have a cousin that lives in Austin, but claims
    it's not really part of Texas!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Treacle Season

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #190 ,  hosted this week by Carrie. Keaton was great in that show—the one with wings— Where he was constantly a [man]child on a ledge  dreaming an angel who became a superhero.   She was a sarcastic (fake?) angel—it was the 80s— But always good, on time, her lessons easy, Easy as it would have been for him to fall.   The metaphor so obvious...but I didn't get it. Nor the easy and obvious good. (/s)   I watch the TV movie every other December Remembering believing in easy And crushing on this character, that city...   Angels should be sweet, sarcastic figures, knowing (like nurses and social workers) we prefer Sleeping on the ledge, reckless to call for "heroes." To clear up any confusion:  there is no Michael Keaton movie we watch every holiday season. Although, if there were...I'd probably watch it.  -- Chrissa
16 comments
Read more

Turn Away

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse , for #193. Turn away, like the moon, listening... Listening to the planet that rumbles with a hundred million slaps. All the feet, all the rockets, all the  pistons in the cars on the asphalt over the chasm where the veins run deep, blue in sunlight, black at night. Running over the chasm.  Once or twice they ran to you. Once or twice they ran by. Greetings and salutations. The sky is an entertaining shade of concrete yellow as the rain promised earlier in the week makes good on its arrival. It's a disturbing bright sallow sky, the kind of sky that puts you in mind of old movies and degraded film stock and the pops and crackles incidental to the main story.  Several years ago I made a resolution to journal more and last year I came across a video that suggested I actually re-read those journals, at least those of the previous year, at the beginning of each new year. Technically, I have kept the journal resolution, making daily notes in the margins of
15 comments
Read more

Revelations

 Sharing with The Sunday Muse #169 : It takes time for the quest to settle into your calves, to work through your soles and up to your shoulders, spreading through nerve and vessel until  you can't go home because you've already left something of yourself there. You can't be in two places at once. You remember vacations but now you think your family's plans probably resembled some supervillain's monologue:  we'll do this and then take them here. It'll be fun. When do you leave the house on time? Who's time? There's a collar of dead bushes at the lawn in front of the gas station, a tiny, grassy patch of the suburbs beyond, ruins of landscaping, bright, dead. Two years ago feels like twenty, feels loud, a power wash of wind through the window; roaring down the dry sewers that funnel a/c through the lawns and backwards, carrying dreams dry and sharp. At this speed, everything cuts as it passes. Appendix 1:  Chrissa is Full of Stuff and Nonsense Let'
13 comments
Read more