Strange Fire
Michael Dickel
Strange Fire
Digital art from photos
©2017 Michael Dickel
smoke and flames of Yahweh flash lightning thunder screams across winter forecast severe weather storm (nothing) volcanic blast (Vesuvius) tamed focused through a lens of incomprehensibility a sense of language (meaning that now what is offered is then consumed) in one moment’s nuclear flash—the people fall down on their knees and the towers’ dusty ash clogs inspiration (screams) despair and fearing everything (knowing nothing) i place my freedoms in a protective pan burning their incense to the most high exalted beasts of commerce and hoping to see my way through the smoke—mirroring truth distorting lies until all of a sudden i can no longer catch (inspiration) choking on my own vomit as darkness closes around me and i wonder who will speak up for me and regain these ashen moths from the shells of glowing cocoons—
cacophony
collapsing sense
and words weapons
wielded against reality
one
at
a
time
until
they
mean
(no)
thing
An earlier, slightly different version from Sound Cloud.
Now available as part of a free PDF chapbook, Breakfast at the End of Capitalism
Categories: Digital Art, Poetry
Meta/ Phor(e) /Play 
I also wrote a poem about the (in)auguration on the same day:
“The Black Bird’s Predilections”
(Raanana, January 20, 2017)
Not ten paces from Daisy and me
A black bird eyed us with a wary stare,
Daisy sniffing tell-tale smells was unaware
But made me think of friends so far away
Who tilt their lances at towering fates
Girded only by our prayers
And if there is a God
He must be on vacation.
The black bird flew to a tree branch
And we continued on our way.
We hadn’t gotten too far when
I thought there must have only been
Enough room for reality in black bird’s head,
Just big enough for flying, worms, and loving,
Too small for hopes and prayers
For religion or for poetry
Let alone philosophy,
And all our big-headed wisdom
Is for the fictions of our phantasmagoria.
Far far away, across the sea,
An old man stands in rain
A few men and women listen to him speak.
The forgotten, he says, will be remembered
(the remembered will be forgotten, I think)
And they will make America great again
(do they really think they’ll flip time’s arrow
while it’s flying? The thinking universe thinks not).
Instead of stretching to stand a little taller
As people sometimes do in augurations,
People shrunk a bit inside themselves
No need to stretch to go back to the things you know.
Black bird fly away,
Fly away black bird.
Are you a portent of things future
Or things past?
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