Flammagenitus Strophes

You pick me up late
a viscous outflow

from the volcanic ledge
of my thinking.

Me in my duplex-hunger,
in my firestorm-astonished

dress, the pattern of crisp asphalt,
the pattern, simple condensed

nuclei, against my dry
lightning ache. You pick me up late

and we drive through
polyhedronated structures

of sound and civics-minded lives,
lives bearing fruit with no regard

for the termination-tables
recently made, vast ledgers

of waste, of debits,
of human trees.

Debris is my name I say
as we drive past

the decibels, the altostratusly
hung steeples, debris is

my name I say, wind
streaming in filaments,

collecting in the gulch,
our mouths barely resonating.

Source: Poetry (November 2019)