I gaze up from my computer and try to breathe

the bleak blinking inside flickers blank

Wouldn’t it feel so rejuvenating to take a break

but these achievements would drag on too long

Would it be so out of line to

give in to the screaming pop within my chest, fire?

I’ve learned how to spark, cultivate a fire—

banish fear of the flame, let it breathe

become one with the crackling heat when you’re tending to

this willful creature, let your mind go a little bit blank

as orange bursts rejoice fiercely against shimmering shadow sky, longing

to lick, kiss, snap higher, to feed flickering cracks sticks break

If you want to do half decent you don’t take that break,

for minute detail, scrutinized under my own fire

blinking to stay awake, I long

for exemptions that I will never take, a breath

They, I, burn, turn, we learn concern for the blank,

bitter images, swimming into color before my eyes, too

much to take. as we unwillingly enter into

these dystopian displays of inhumanity, how long before we break?

we blink, wishing in vain the world could reset blank

who’s going to set the unjust weapons of the power abusers on fire

inhale the smoke of acerbic victory as we watch them burn, we breathe

a breath of sparkle dripping spring sprinkle, of fair, free life awaited so long

as I type and scroll, type and scroll, why it is so wrong to long

for finite answers to the inconceivable conundrums of the present, to

aspire to crack the paradoxes of the future, to find time alone to simply breathe,

I condemn the incessant urge to retreat into that bubble before I break, before it breaks

my physicality incapable of turning from the potency of tantalizing fire

personal, societal, stuck steadily spiraling within anxious, frantic, apathetic blank

please, can I go blank

to the world, if I nod or stare or talk or laugh too long

suddenly I can’t focus amidst the brain fire

what’s new, the unfailing outskirt of four, or three, or two

without or with a listening ear will I break?

maybe it’s for the best my feelings can’t breathe

Has it been too long now to

step through invisible fire and calmly, passionately break?

it can be okay, even if it’s a little blank, just breathe.