The Things I Lost In The Fire Poem by Daniel Y.
The Things I Lost In The Fire
my home is a charcoal sketch
a nuclear shadow of itself
one can see the outline
of an unfinished life
like a struck match
like a rubbed off eraser
i run inside to salvage anything
the home i’ve called home for 20 years
my hands sift through layers of black leaves
looking for all my deep, deep dreams
i find a matchbox untouched by the fire
with 20 ginger heads tucked in bed
i pull one out
and light a cigarette
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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4/19/2024 5:21:57 PM # 1.0.0.1119
THINGS I LOST IN THE FIRE is a lucid poem, direct, poignant, complete. I have seen the image on TV News of people going thru debris in search of their wrecked lives so many times: this poem is a homage to them all. I like the heightened effect of LOOKING FOR ALL MY DEEP DEEP DREAMS, which relates to his realization that his is AN UNFINISHED LIFE. The irony of finding matches (!) is - disconcerting, but lighting a cigarette with one of them is either despair or bravado or both. Another tight, vivid, arrow in the bulls-eye poem!
Thanks, Daniel. I imagined the final act as an illustration of numbness. Her wounds are simultaneously inflicted and cauterized. I'm always fascinated with paradoxes (and of emotion no less) .