Fire proof

It's better to burn out than to fade away.

This is the first line in the flame bible,

Followed by flame zealots everywhere.

Take a life and let it race,

Burning brightly, tearing through,

Crackling and smoking

A disregard for everything

With an appetite for consumption:

Rapacious, greedy, stripping experience's opportunity

Like a locust.

Then there's nothing

But the bright memory of life lived

Scorched on a retina.

*

I don't want the destruction of fire.

I don't want to feel the heat

Or have the acrid taste of smoke

In my mouth, choking my lungs.

The temporary blaze is not something I seek.

The spectacle speaks to me of waste,

A profligate showing-off which achieves very little.

The drama that attracts the daring

Does not draw me to danger.

It bores me, makes me yawn

With its sadness and its misguided intensity.

I'm not against fire;

But I want the steady burn

Of the hearty hearth.

I want the glow of a life contained

By boundaries and the strength of stone.

I'll throw some fuel on

And savour the flare,

Feel the warmth as it increases

And spits and sparks

But I want my fire to last

Without destructive spread.

I want to warm the cheeks of those I love,

To take their winter cooled hands

And have their blood rush

With the pleasure of being close to me,

To feel the comfort.

And I want to fade to ashes over time,

My core diminishing by degrees,

Its red heat fading like a Californian sunset

As I recede from vibrant colour

To blackened ash

And my grey flakes are taken by the wind,

A smudge left from a life well lived.