Smouldering Ashes

It gives warmth in the coldest and most desperate hours.

The flickering faster than a blink of an eye.

One would need a good camera.

Like Kubrick in Barry Lyndon.

The device that kills life on Earth.

The most natural fear we have, instinctual and generational.

As the seeds are spread, the life will rise again like a phoenix from the ashes.

To take life and sow the life.

That is fire.

As the world’s explorers keep their spirits up around a fire.

As it rages through destroying everything in its path.

Bringing humanity to its knees.

The coal that never stops rotting, burning and is buried for what feels like eternity.

For the many meals that keep people alive.

And the happy jovial songs around a campfire.

That keeps the soul and spirits burning.

For the ability to give life, and take life.

A sense of doubt that will be flooded with hope.

When once the humanity lingers on a last hurdle.

All that has gone will come again.

It’s not alive but it is life.

It’s not dead but it brings death.

For it speaks in flickers and whispers like a snake.

It’s not good but it’s good at heart.

It’s not evil but it’s evil incarnate.

What do you call it?

Is it something from a far away land?

It is fire.

Lights the candle on your first birthday cake and lights the cigarette on your last day as you lie dying in a hospital from lung cancer.

It knows you well, and you know it well.

It has followed you around for years and kept you not from freezing.

It’s a friend of yours but is not alive.

The charcoal makes a pattern similar to chalk as it writes your class tasks on a whiteboard.

It’s a love hate relationship.

The chemistry is a furore and passion to beat. As it’s only fire.

The object or combustion that makes wax melt and burn.

Cigars merge with air.

As the smoke billowing out chokes people to death.

Makes the metal for an idiotic vermin to assassinate someone who made the bold mistake of walking down the street that night.

The moronic swine who shot the dog.

Your dog at the pound.

Well that’s another story.

For each striving of mankind is another tragedy.

Maybe we never came too far.

Maybe we overestimate ourselves.

For what is life without us?

We don’t know.

But we try to master the fire.

That’s all we can do.

That’s all there is.

It will keep burning as long as we feed it.

Or stop it from feeding on us.

Is it alive? No.

But it feeds and prey like a villain.

It ain’t.

It’s the life force and the death force all rolled into one.

Like the cigarette you smoke with all the anxiety it’s built to cure.

But it’s just a temporary relief.

As it does not age like you.

The fire.

It’s not red nor orange.

Not yellow or brown.

It’s like exploding twilight in a tucked away beach.

The air it is fed will rob you blind.

It’s fire. It’s the boss.

It will be our demise.

The whole of your life you thought it was a joke - tiny thing in your pocket.

A thing that you can never find when you need it.

It’s there to light a candle and nothing more.

The cigarettes you promised your mother you would quit.

It’s not right; but nothing is.

When mastery is nothing. They say.

It’s all consuming as long as you don’t breath its air; it’s fire!