Empire of Ash

Ashes.

Piles of soot spread about

the floors of my heart.

Burned so many times

it’s no longer capable of

holding a flame.

A beating vessel of ash.

Pushing slag through my

veins, flooding into my brain,

clouding the works, the logic,

the rational and steady computations

of the mind.

Cold to the touch,

frostbitten with ash,

fingertips numb to the softness

of skin, the teasing touches of

eager passion,

all ashes.

A once leaping warm heart,

burning with vitality and vigor,

dulled to the numb beat of

extinguished flames, the

lub-dub pumper just an old

blackened chimney.

A cough, pitch and thick,

heavy with the millions of

words spent on fiery embraces,

drifting on clouds of coal dust

and ash. A putrid cloud of

empty promises.

The ashes of youth, the ashes

of thinking I knew what I was doing,

about love, about passion, about life,

the ashes, spread about the timbers

and joints of my life, crisped from

the old fires, now weak and dangerous.

Ashes, spread about the place,

making me wonder, who will

clean this mess up.

Who would even

want to?   

Is there a she, willing to get

so dirty, so covered in soot.

Grab a shovel, dig in, sweep and

bless the ashes from my heart,

and dismiss them in the fires

of her passions.

Reignite, rekindle, restart the

incandescent heat.

She is the middle word

in ashes. So perhaps she

has always been there, stoking

the fires, burning it all down

for her own empire of Ash.

Our Empire of Ashes.