Fire Escape
The city, on fire, lies still to listen to the song of her sirens
and to the balcony serenades sung down,
remembering the war-cries she had once heard from atop the ash heap
by those breathing-in the dooming bones of the unknown,
just another layer in the anthropocene of a first responder.
How I've missed her warm glow, as I've faded here in the luxury of being
an outsider at times of tragedy
who will be heard from. Who will go? Who will come back and begin again?
I miss the quieting of her commotion as I fade to the tree frogs' haunted dollops
that pulsate through the suburban insect static.
The fire, uncitied, still lies to the happily red and ravished
through the fingerstuffed ears of those who give invitation
to warm their frostbitten hearts, leaving only hospital waste and a little more
space—
Another striped shroud is stripped and bleached and put back into circulation.
What is it you fear when you lie still and as lonely as a smoldering city
silencing what (boozesexmoneylovefamily)
you've drawn up around yourself to muffle
the voice at the base of your skull that whispers the one thing
you never wanted to know, at every moment of your drawn up life.
Who else is there to pay what you owe?
- © Edward Raso 2021
Edward Raso's poetry has been published in The Mystic Blue Review and is forthcoming in RAW Journal of Arts. His fiction has been published in Causeway Lit as the winner of the 2016 award, eFiction Magazine, and Soft Cartel, among others. In music, he has written, performed on, mixed, produced and recorded over 15 platinum and gold albums. He lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with his family.
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