Robbie Coburn & Michele Seminara: Collaboration # 9

The Charred World   (Robbie Coburn) 

I seek the sky      at dawn,

windowless air        ignites the fires 

blinded and choked    by the sodium glow.

hell.   too hot         to breathe

exposed skin a moving target

scratched and       broken

until   ash   has scaled the length of   bodies.

a thrown landscape. I realise grief

comes too late to harness.   an inferno 

unfolds drumming along the grasses

circling trees       stoking the leaves

yellow to black, and    always  red

the wind     pinches  like an accelerated 

flame    smoking        eyes

the houses    have gone up, already

the people are kissed  by  gas corpses.

I live here       for days       beside them

the  sleeping shells voiceless,   embers

catching innocent burial lots.

this is nature, then.       no way to fight   

a silent evil begging      any god to

burn the charring      world

miles from       the source of light.

Sodium Glow  (Michele Seminara)

this landscape of grief unfolds

miles from light. 

begging a silent god

I seek the sky; 

a thrown fight. 

accelerated burial, eyes

kissed by nature's evil, 

I live beside the innocent,

a smoking body 

circling hell. 

my windowless skin 

an   exposed   sleeping   target —

for days the drumming

of the black wind

ignites me.