SOMETIMES WHEN ON FIRE

sometimes when on fire i say,
"someone should answer the phone," and
"i am not going to answer the phone."
then i hear a woman yelling.

i say, "i am going to stop eating pennies for dinner."
then i feel calm and then i feel wrenched.
i feel large like the refrigerator and you are the window.
it is only today that i learned what a fire axe is.

what if you had a yellow orb of light for a head.
i would very much like going to sleep with you.
oh can we go to sleep? i have been waiting
for permission to break the moon with an axe.

when i am on fire i don't feel obligated
to do the dishes. i do not even take out the trash.
i lie on the couch and smolder.
this is not my fault.

__

YELLOW CIRCLES OF LIGHT

when it's hot my stomach hurts and i miss henry. henry is a person i have never met. henry is like a coke bottle in the parade of auschwitz. everywhere i turn there is an animal in a cage.

when i have a problem i buy a red heart purse and spit into it until it is full. then i throw the purse on the subway tracks. the heart gets run over and i feel my chest inflate. sometimes people are bad. but maybe there is a kind of badness that is like the bacteria that causes stomach ulcers. this happened to my grandmother.

i like yellow circles of light and the shadows they make. when i am alone i miss henry and my chest sinks down through the couch. i find myself chewing on a coke bottle and then i think, "remember how you are not supposed to be doing this." i can feel the glass in my chest. i don't want to do the dishes if henry isn't here. when i go home there is always a small animal waiting for me in the corner. 

__

"sometimes when on fire" started from earlier lines that are part of nothing now: sometimes when on fire i think i have water, i have water, i have water. i have to think this. i am the only person in the world.

"yellow circles of light" is about a real person that i have never met, and so is, in a sense, imaginary. his name isn't henry and he isn't [this person].