Flamethrower

Write whatever you like and then just burn it, he says.
Just write whatever you like. Just burn it.
Just burn whatever you like. I saw a flamethrower
on the television. It was a movie I was watching a
movie about aliens.

So I’m going to burn you says I. Because it can be
as if it never was. I have this problem trusting people because
you just can’t trust people. I have this problem where
I want badly to be loved.

There’s this thing that matches do when they are
old in the book they sweat the source.
I find I have known myself all along. I always
hoped I was wrong. But I really am
alone and with the black books.
As in the beginning.

It used to be self indulgent to be frightened
of the country.  I’m told that what would drive me
from my home is a musing of the first world.
I am a first world girl. Waiting for the phone
to ring, the mobile phone.

And if it weren’t my life it would feel like undue privilege.

He says well it looks as if we both have some
recalculating to do. We were supposed to be dead
by now but as with many things we were
bestowed with

M O R E

so I recalculate the chorus as it comes
back around

“I was born like this,
I had no choice,
I was born with the gift
of a golden voice,”
to claw for at the
other end of the dissonant
line