Frozen Immolation Quartet

One

It was not just a stranger.
The stranger with the coins
is no longer as strange to you.
It was the waiting, each day
a new forever, filled with
strangers, coins, last moments
shorter than the outstretched hands.

Two

A little boy crosses the street,
followed by a little girl in red.
The boy, in blue, makes it safely,
and so does the girl, but the
mother watches as they failed
(to look both ways, to hold hands)
and starts crying, right there,
in the middle of traffic, before
almost getting hit by a yellow cab.

Three

"I mean, if they
would just stop writing
about themselves and
start writing upwards,
to the sky, where new
findings await, air to
your water and earth
and fire, that special
flame casket, if they
would only look up there,
through the sky, heavens,
astral part, aerial part--
move forward, man, move on!"

Four

The cat escapes the mouth
of the doorway, a voice
releasing "get outta here,
ya ghost," and it watches
the voice (in waves) as
it lunges through the wind.
Survival through snow dust.
Cold cravings balancing
atop new-starred concrete steps.

The cat escaped and the voice
is gone off, talking to itself,
inside the house, over in
the kitchen, turning the stove
on high, then turning it down,
a second thought, voices do this
sometimes, not stutter but
think again and again and over,
the pan being rinsed, placed,
no thoughts about cats, no
thoughts about India or China
or Vietnam, but maybe, if
we could just burn our hands,
and think it through this time,
maybe oh, maybe, think about
fortune as a square instead
of a wheel lodged in the mud.