Flaring Up and Flaming Down

Flaring up and flaming down abound around this town.

Everything and everyone aspire to the vast. Hyperbole

is bred and bled from first to last: their best is better

than your best, the worst more cursed. While no one

says they court catastrophe, it would blaspheme to think

or dream they didn’t. They have no truck with calm. Eyes

light up at prospects of the doomed and irreversible, like

being cornered in a cul-de-sac beneath a falling bomb.

If it entails a raging fire it stokes these folks’ desires.

For any badly misbehaving lass or lad, they’re glad to open

up, indeed will dope them up if they’ve a chance. Excess

marks success. They undergo what it requires: humiliation

and exposure, embarrassment, disclosure. We watched

a nude hermaphrodite alighting on a falling quadrupedal

humanoid ignite the air around them to a white-hot blare –

which singed their naked nether regions badly.

They madly wished they’d put on pants. We asked them

where they came from. They said it wasn’t France. Well,

we thought, at least one thing was clear. We’d reached

the point where we devoutly wished we weren’t here.

.