Blue—
rising from molten metal
in a cauldron/
it’s the blue of blues,
the blue of bullets
burning, melted
and aflame/
it is the blue in which,
you see your father as he looked
1000 years ago
in a beard and sort of a cloak
at the base of an oak/
it is the phrase
“the blue flame”
which means something about
a guitar or motor/
it is the blue fire to one side,
like a blue bird that arises
and scorches the immediate air,
a pole,
a peal
of decibels,
the blue bell/
it is the berries
set to bloom/
the blue of the tattoos
on your shins
and the light under which
you stand and speak/
it is the blue tone
in the voice, then/
one fire of two,
grotesque, saturating
and saturated/
it is blue and it burns
to bones
Orange—
a pole, the orange fire
to one side/
the orange, pervading light
emanates from her
maw, a camera, a room
that bursts into public/
not only one but two,
and feel the heat of it,
sweat the heat of the
burning of the beginning
of summer/
the smoke carries messages
to space, internal
rhymes (with orange)
and alliterates—
no assonance/
words flicker and lick faces,
singe, scarify the flesh/
the feeling
when in front of a fire
on the early summer night/
the orange fire
is a tiny-tongued bird
with neon eggs,
a nest or a pyre/
drinking a 40
in front of a fire,
the crackle of
the bouncing spark on ground
and past the hills
in the distance is a valley
and it is warm there/
and though you sit silent,
the orange fire spins
and burns skin, hair
Between—
the poem can be
whatever you want it to be,
you blow as deeply
as you want to go,*
you have your song/
wherever the air
bears weight/
dispensing with metaphor,
what is the song?
waves that ripple flesh
one night before
the flesh was gone/
air waves emanating
from a horn/
and bone?
vibrates into the bones too,
amplifiers all the way up
bashing the fucking guitar
till the hand bleeds,
and the drums/
finding all those little spaces
hidden in the scale,
the notes in between
that harmonically hum
through the feedback/
the overblown notes
of the horn/
the expansion
and compression of energy
as the hand brushes past the knee
as you twist and step
and the other hand follows
forward and out you whirl back
pull the hands in guide the energy
up through the center
and out again
Michael S. Begnal is the author of Future Blues (Salmon Poetry 2012) and Ancestor Worship (Salmon Poetry 2007), as well as the chapbooks Tropospheric Clouds (Adjunct Press 2020) and The Muddy Banks (Ghost City Press 2016). He has also written a book on the rock band the Stooges, The Music and Noise of the Stooges, 1967-71: Lost in the Future (Routledge 2022). He has an M.F.A. from North Carolina State University.
Image: “Boldly Forth, Into New Frontiers, Go” by Bill Cawley
Pine Hills Review 