When the fire escaped the wizard's athanor hidden on the mountain's summit,
"destroying both vessel and furnace," fiery hierophanies scrambled down
ladders of living trees I could hear screaming as they burst into flame.

                                                     Suddenly a whirling mushroom cloud rose
                                                     Before his singed eyes, and he was a mass Of flame.
                                                     Globes, one after another, rolled out...                                                    

Sweet smoke crept across a mercurious redfaced morning, gusty winds
coughing up hundreds of hotspots. Ashes settled on pavement, flowers,
roofs, lawns, the windshields of vehicles gassed-up with nowhere to go.

After the flames had passed, the sky slowly clearing, my skin began
to burn into this wild project, conflating fiction and non-fiction.
The only choice you've got is whether to acknowledge this
or not, whether you will exploit the joints and seams,
or not, and whether you will allow the sheer
act of writing from the inside out.

       We walk around with our distant interior, throwing
       out light. O to be beautiful when the fire erupts!