Life Gone On

by WC Roberts

Heat Made Simple forgot to mention
how the flesh drips like a wax dummy
when taken to extremes. Blue and red
wax for the anatomist in his book
of maps – therein a body lies
inert, the honesty of veins,
cosmopolitan
arteries going no place,
estranged and faraway moon
with the burning . . . everything else
is lost, with sticks of dynamite
and a Molotov cocktail. Heat
the only thing sustained
at the point of ignition,
more earth than sky. The sun
melts my wings, the flesh drips, and
life goes on. But not for me.

WC Roberts lives in a mobile home up on Bixby Hill, on land that was once the county dump. The only window looks out on a ragged scarecrow standing in a field of straw and dressed in WC’s own discarded clothes. WC dreams of the desert, of finally getting his first television set, and of ravens. Above all, he writes.