Bones

The lambs were arranged over the coals head to toe head to toe the way you'd put a bunch of kinds having a sleepover into a bed. We kept a heavy metal garden rake next to the pit to arrange the coals as the passed and the ashes built up, moving the spent coals to the edges and revealing the hot glowing red embers. The lambs roasted so slowly and patiently that their blood dripped down into the coals with a hypnotic and rhythmic hiss, which sounded like the hot tip of a just-blown-out match being dipped into a cup of water. My dad basted them by dipping a branch of wood about as thick and long as an axe handle, with a big swab of cheesecloth tied at its end, into a clean metal paint can filled with olive oil, crushed rosemary and garlic, and big chunks of lemons. He then mopped the lambs, slowly, gently, and thoroughly, back and forth with soft careful strokes like you might paint your brand-new sailboat. Then the marinade, too, dripped down onto the coals, hissing and atomizing, it scent lifting up into the air. So all day long, as we did our chores, the smell of gamey lamb, apple-wood smoke, and rosemary garlic marinade comingled and became etched into our brains. I have clung to it for thirty years, that smell. I have chronic summertime yearning to build large fires outdoors and slowly roast whole animals. I could sit fireside and baste until sundown. Hiss. Hiss. Hiss.

Gabrielle Hamilton - Blood, Bones, & Butter

fever plane

she and i fever brained opium eyed high in the air devils in the mind she toothless i less than toothsome ravaged plied from the earth our home
we the sick slouch behind the poisoned well who glare at her gums at me glass eyed while we are high opium eyed plied from our minds our home
we the devils soar high and hot fever soaked minds ply our glass eyes to cold windows of the plane opium earth wide and white plied from the sky our home
she and i afeared third eyes glow red and wide burned devils minds slouch to fly above iced plains wide and white hot and blind fevered planed ravaged us sick adrift - our home.

burning

and he tastes like smoke
soot of my soul

he's got a dirty job
but someone's gotta do me

Q: WHO ARE YOU EVEN TALKING TO ANYMORE?

∝: myself, nobody. a vacant pronoun, a flaccid 'you', the vaguest addressee...

there is nothing here to rail against, but such vast forces pinning me to the sea floor. new-slowed molten seeps out my mouth and nostrils, forming islands out of congealed primordial rage. the new rock faces maintain my dumbed look, unblinking.

in the old world, i could scream and fly and spit ash and never need land. in the old world, everything burned illuminated, unconsumed.
in the new world, i lay still enough to maybe grow an olive tree, for a dove to find when i am less inhospitable; when i lay still enough to leak out a mountain to populate, billions of quiet years from now.

love is a generation of vipers

Paris: He eats nothing but doves, love, and that breeds hot blood, and hot blood begets hot thoughts, and hot thoughts beget hot deeds, and hot deeds is love.

Pandarus: Is this the generation of love - hot blood, hot thoughts, and hot deeds? Why, they are vipers. Is love a generation of vipers? Sweet lord, who's a-field today?

Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida, 3.1