The Words Came from the Fire
Poems by H.M. Stefanec
Dedication: Only for You
with figure study drawings by Amy M. Kosina
Twin Flame
And maybe I can set fire to the house. Fire in the moldy walls from hot bathing wants. Fire in the heart that makes the breathing nauseous. My burning heart on your burning heart, shirts off like fire. Your hands like fire. Holding me down and filling my lungs with fire. Fire pushing my wrists into ash. Words of smoke exploding from fiery pain. Melting red eyes filling mine. Fire on the couch you once had me on. Balls of flame heating the keys on my wall. My ignition. An energy we can’t quench. Smoldering floors beneath us with no exit. No escape- route. Crawling up the stairwell you throw me. Pieces of glass to our bed of roses, opening, to open my skin- ready and hot, to pierce me. Shattering screams from woods of maple that once made the music we danced to. Shattering illusion. Fire on your lips, set fire to my lips, between us we will leave nothing. Fire consuming braveries once claimed, smoking out blame. Only fuel remains. Fires in my belly. Rocking chair spitting out baby sparks, nursed off the mother flame. Piano keys tuning down further, hear the strings murmur as they vibrate their last song. Walls of fire, a sea of flames no one can tame. Fire following fire. More victims to inspire. Crashing fires, meteors, now here we are with melting tongues. Glowing lava flowing. Nowhere to run. Toxic air we used to clean together. Fire taught to make things better. Blooming night, dusk of torched dazzling white. Room to the West, the East’s only ashtray. Hot and blue, for you. No remedy. Pipes bursting, water savior evaporating. Black smoldering, animals scurrying, closets bursting. Secrets gone. Bursts of explosion, entering me. Flickering, devouring, so quickly. To burn is to confess. A storm of fire I made. Begging me to come home. To everything and nothing. No air, no freedom here. Burning for truth. Fire of passion, before it all ends, before the dark descends. Alarms ringing reality. No defense. Facts extinguished. Only crackling cackling anguish pursues us. Thought we knew prevention. Fire letting it all collapse. Up in smoke. Our element.
Safety
And so came the engine, an angel to spare me. Screeching sirens calling for a fight, and I, so easy to burn. Oh, bring here your flashy machine wings; what will it matter as combustion, sooty as your polished leather, steps upon my lungs. So. Much. Heat. And the people are watching. And now, do I only fall? Keep to the ground, crawl, check every door until— such confusion to the air. Trapped. Dizzy and weak, hallucinating your shape, a shadow to free me, the rattling of being. I see; you hold the oxygen for which I plead. Agitation and palpitations, injury inhaling me. The shallow breathing and your heart to seize me, hide me, a hyperbaric chamber to my entity. This mechanical medical scene the only way to heal me. The stages of rebuilding just for you to never let me, when I cannot stop the letting. And here you leave me, to re-experience the tragedy, numb the daydreams, hyper-aroused and begging you. Why, why, why take me, when only you can keep me, when only love can save me.
New Foundation
Dug our way down, to level ground. Footings and slab, according to plans. The deeper we go, the stronger we become. And our cement secrets we pour, to form our basement of torture. We are the lime and the sand, spreading, to fill such empty spaces. Meant to feel the steel pierce our centers, as we reinforce the hold. A finger to the wetness and a drawing of the faithfulness, always a heart and a name between the floors. We set, and our proper form is revealed. Frozen as a tombstone and walling in the blackness, and what of the weight? But quakes to wake, and still, we remain. The tragedy, a perfect forgotten dream, where the ghost of the girl in me dances about rafters, and swings her legs from collar ties, while you, strutting support and ready to truss her up, bring her back down to watch her cry. And how I want to scream for my confessions, to feel your light hold me tightly. Stop my breath, frame me, eyes soaked with innocence at every cost I would give, for my trembling hand to touch the strength of our interconnected rigidity.
Power
Electricity lights a life in a flash, a luminosity fifty times any sun we know. Our spirit home, nestled beneath a sky of silence. Your voice my drift velocity, the current carrying me, by reason of physics. And may my bright loyalty be as exposed as your white collar undone. Do you not feel the tidal effects- how we glow, our white-hot halo? Our networks are wired, see, a magnetic rippling, and I need you now to operate. My grounding. My speed. Out we go. Naked words as silver slivers dancing on our lake of black, alone in the nebulous, we are. Where I will beg to touch the glowing countenance of your star. Ah, for my only wish to rise. I never knew how those things came true, until you. Some nuclear fusion, a core reaction, and the dark matter between us my only fuse. Twisting together, burning around each other and ready to form, our evolving model an entire state of reason. What beacon comes from such heavenly body! Where in your radiant wake, each nightmare dies, where bright and brilliant explications of our minds die alive; together, we have spent our years in the light, in the night. And I fought my eyes to stay awake, now shut in a kiss and waiting, to ignite new fate. Where the energy in your center works me to my good. To a universe beyond the fixed, beyond the observed. Our black hole horizon.
Twilight
Drunk with moonlight I go to your shore, so I can rise to your civility. Sun whip cracking, dawning the first blush, and I, starving for to witness the grace of your face, and thirsty but to taste your energy. Eyes through paned glass, on your horizon. And colors of the beginning, painting our nocturnal plight, scattering red pieces into bruised violet blues. That red, the longest wavelength you know, a path blocking all other colors through the atmosphere. What chill on the eastern hill, what veil-like shadows and I, in fair waiting, amazed by your beauty. Oh nothing more rewarding than your golden hour blanketing me, to make a life worth living. Yet daylight dreams are loud, and I fear the walk of sleep. Quite like me to dream by frail philosophies, of surrender to a perfect rising passion; like old stories resting on nightstands, like pictures forgotten, like nostalgia I can’t be without. All these reveries of torment, driving, telling, creating each new day, only to burn us down again. Yet there can be no other way. So how can I serve you today? And for the rest of my days? Love is all that I worship. Sun-up, I am ready to give. Privileged.
Penance
My bashful admission is lowered to your suited promulgation, where charms are withdrawn, where the screen of purpose trembles us. A black box full of tired secrets and echoing with unvaried cries, where only the Master grasps my whole domain, where grief is contained, where hope swells at my breast. Oh, reconciliation, a place to dwell more often. Where I am lovelier in tears, where you can finally hear how I am kept by the fear of thy kingdom come. Reparation is a musing’s lie, pointing out the soul’s eternal sleep, deserving the most just damnation. But I plead, as it pleases best, this soul seen. Shuddering still, to face the resounding refrain, the chorus of desire, where my fluttering heart burns. Reject me not, these soft hands to strike waxy prayer and my Lord, to keep watch. And even if it brand’s the fixed seat and my knees, I will worship thee!
Moratorium
I am afraid you know not what you do, the symbiotic ring choking, I left ravenous and hung upon your crooked cross. Mind-forged cuffs, holding me. And I ask for it, don’t I? To ever sigh and pine? Oh, nature, ever true. How I must obey time, wrinkling the hand you once touched. We are all taught to take it as it comes. And, I am scared, as I am only left wanting more faithful fear. This withering and waiting as nails spreading my skin thin. Of all the use I could have been as I lose all I never had, of what is fit and not, forsake nothing that cannot be promised. But your earth is not afraid, and your planets are devoted, and with hurt so pretty, I hide your air in my mouth. It grows fiercer at the silence, red lips not so red, heart cooling, but here I will hang. Because dear voice in the vortex, you really did ask me to give you everything. So wet me with even half of your rain, with the knowing we ever should come near, open my eyes so to leak the freedom of what I give. The world will hear now; I will never come down, without you.
Firesetter
The place you put me, a purposeful release, a prison escape, a binding bareness I can finally take. All I know is that I want to stay. A catalyst, a reactant, a resting place. Embedded with your blank sheets, to cover with graphic lines of decree, oh speak for me. Debunk my claim to anything. Let down the weight of petrified peace, bring such unto me. So pure the heart, so clear the sight, my flower of verse the hymn to your praise, such reverence cannot replicate. A calling to come to your temple, in breaking I convert. Initiation full the proof, that my duty seeks your truth. The throb of awe against my skin, the joy bursts forth in circles, the elements are here to stay, with winds to fan the flame. Yet I will come to you through thunder, yes I will come to you through rain. Our sign the lightening splitting wood, a breath, a pulse, a torch lit gateway to sanctity.
Journey
We remain the sacred keepers of the flame. The vulnerable aching of today, the withered yesterday, all meant for blame. But I know the rhythmic whisper, I feel it down my skin, understand exposure, the expiration of innocence, the evidence, please, the assurance, the security. There is no running from our nature, though takes a crown of courage. Vulnerability is no choice, yet lucky to inhabit. How to fall so effortlessly, no vow of landing softly, the affiance of everything, completely given up. Your shrine. An offering. Skin stripped. Bone bouquet. Here a whole existence. Here a revelation.
Perfect Storm
I want to burn forever for you. Make it last forever, for you. Do you know there is forever for you? But all the pain in forever like the look of murder, yet a wellspring I chase until my face goes numb, to learn the mystery at sea. And the telling calm taunts a dare. So quiet, how quiet! Deep ocean obedience to earth’s least command, beckoning my baptism. Oh, earth! Such swells and waves wash over me, and hail, from unseen clouds, enough to make me bleed. Feet kicking for appointed land. And drowning is not chosen. It is, who do you run to in the middle of the water, in such a greedy wave. And all I do is let go, a fountain down my throat, leading to a reality in my soul I cannot bear. But oh, it is these sweeping nightmares that liberate me. It is here I always come. It is here I must yield to a direction of significance. Eyes of dreary marbles, who is it that I see? No face. No expression. Is it me? Lost inside of you? It is you, always here with me. Where thoughts break free and your barge made of ice carries me; salt wearing, heart sinking, sea screaming for your cold mercy.
Anonymous God
I turned away Lord, turned to see you, holding me blue in your open invisible eyes. Oh to be observed from your sphere. Your mystic ferocity takes my soul and I can’t tell if I am on fire, or frozen, but the waves of rapture recede, and you wake me, kissed, with the possibility of pain none the different than our own. Our names float in the stopped weather. Echoing hope. And my spirit falls, a pleasure-loving creaturely thing, dewy in devotion and hushed in your arms. Would you not say that my living is possible and real and never to be let go? Do you not take the key I gave to your open chest? All doubt in your palm, all trust naked and bound. Waking up alone I give you the air of new dawn, bring you your cup and sing you such sweet requiem. My voice in your verse, for the sake of the body, won’t you unlock me? For being believed, some available version of infinity, it is beauty, beauty, beauty. Oh bringer of sight and heat with invisible me licking invisible command from your invisible hand, oh invisible entwining. Submissive belief and tongue pressed in prayer, you shall know my nature. Wound up by the justice of chance, I dance, to the music box melody of your order.
Destiny’s Coincidence
You said to live, hands cupping my face, and sweet spike of fever, I learned to speak! The words boil out of me, in cosmic conviction, and I race to bring flowers to your dove white room. That fit of fire, come as it must, inspires dialect from this the holiest one. Positions change, but our cadence is constant; the only promise I keep on the breath of pure presence. A comfort to the fragile scars of reminders, knowing at last how we got here, knowing at last what you own. There is more than blood flowing when living in questions, but guardian of my solitude, I trust in your answers. I am a fascination of your creation, your noble self. Behold the new chalice, our elixir, our fiery way to discover. In my gut burns your chaos star, your power to create and destroy unleashed. And never shall I be so blessed than to marry my body to your dust.
Amy Kosina Artist Statement:
I create what I do because I believe life is too short to not leave behind something that says, “I was here, and this is how I perceived the world.” My subjects are mostly organic. If it was created by nature, it interests me. I work in many two-dimensional mediums and am always experimenting, but my favorites will always be pencil and charcoal. There is something so elegant to working with black and white.
Reach Amy @ https://www.instagram.com/amy.k.art/
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