When The Furnace Lost Its Rage

It raged!

Burned so it was white raw

Hot

Burned so it was blinding

Hot

Burned so it was quivering

Hot

(hot, hot, hot, lol)

Hot enough to melt together.

Hot enough to be denatured

and forge something new.

Hot enough to take a roasting.

Hot enough to grill one another.

Hot enough to slowly slide apart.

Center Stage:

The furnace - Black, round, iron like a giant knight's helmet

still roaring;

furiously bailing buckets of heat up to the high arched ceiling,

sharpening the crystal tips of a dull chandelier,

then tarring its back with sticky dust;

making only the cobwebs dance

and stifling everything else.

Left Downstage: Lover,

strewn across the couch; infilling the pours of its fabric;

Right Downstage: Lover,

flat like thin sliced ham on the scuffed wood floor.

Each drunk on being

adrift in their own worlds.

Floating by constructs and performance,

tending only to themselves.

Left upstage:

An overdressed double bed, a table, two chairs,

a stool cornering a piano - everything!

Everything left standing had four legs,

had two pairs,

or was part of one, and was nervous.

Embarrassed, even.

Right Center:

A widowed plastic mop bucket stayed dry

and empty but for tiny shields of

bark and snapped blades of kindling.

Left Center:

A cracked plastic bin, failing to gulp a clingy bag of

rot down its parched throat. A dirty poker,

a joke of a shovel, and a silly little brush; all hanged

next to that ferocious metal beast.