Something in this crooked heart is breaking. The fires are burning on the hill. I can see them overtaking the city's horizon from my rooftop view and like the devil at mass, tears instinctually issue forth from this crooked heart.

I am crying because the fires threaten my tribe. I can see the helicopters - the canopy of water sprayed, I can hear wailing widow sirens and I want to smother the inferno to save, preserve, protect whatitis I think needs protecting with my very own bare hands.

Or do something important, something noteworthy, something that matters before we all loose this beloved thing inevitably of fire or famine or cancer or car accident.

Instead I am writing poetry on my rooftop like devastation were some prime time tune-in. Feeling like riots could be raging behind the next landscape crest, like annihilation could be stalking me from a not so distant window, like anarchy could be standing over my shoulder with cold steel at my neck and I'd be doing just the same.

Nothing important. Nothing meaningful. Just writing poetry and watching fire, knowing someone will extinguish it eventually and secretly rooting for it to raze as much as it can while it can because I've never witnessed something this voracious, this wonton, this potent - this free - ever before.

Ever.

To throw our head back and cackle at the sky, "Give me everything you've got - I will not be contained" while little hoses dampen us with spittle and puny machines make their alarms.

I cry because everyday I see death. I still want the fire to win.

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