I’m a big fan of the poet Joseph Fasano. I discovered him on social media, which is where I’ve discovered a lot of poets, slam poets on the various videos, snippets of lines and snapshots of books people upload. Once again, I’m going to trust to another poet to help me past my… block with blank verse, and Joseph Fasano seems like a grand gentleman for the journey.
Untitled, after Joseph Fasano’s “The Middle of the Way.” This one is definitely still a draft – it took me the whole ruddy day – and still has no title (EDITED TO ADD: Nope – I came up with one tangentially related now, so whew. I actually… like this? A little? It has internal rhyme. I can live with that):
Burn Scar
A low-banked fire waiting, smoldering coals,
A little life left yet guttering in flame.
A child, on hearing father’s hurried step
Looks up with homefires burning in her gaze.
They’re doused, as with the sea salting his tongue
He speaks, and drowns new-born an ember’s heart,
Then raked across the coals, she’s left, bereft,
He’s heedless how combustion leaves its mark.
Exhausted and extinguished, ardor dies,
Cementing sodden ash. But let him look
And clammy hearth once more sputters to spark
The smoke rises forever in this space,
and fumbles towards the tinder, towards this flame
and surges suddenly to brilliant blaze.