Garage on Fire

In the Garage, fire and smoke

Fire and smoke, smoke, smoke!

Flames that choke like spikes
Breathing out air sharp as knives
Rusty, rusty edges; lying still
It swept me unconscious, swept

And swept and swept

As I slept, and slept and slept

The smoke, slacken slowly
Under my bedroom door
Around my bed, my mouth shut

It slid over me, slid and slid

Like a snake unfed, a snake

A crushing, tightening snake;

The smoke chokes me with its splinters
Shaped like gloves, shook
And pulled and screeched,
Specimens of death holding on tight,
To clamp around my feet, like steel,
To crush and be crushed, with toxic air

Like pulp, like rusty spikes

Slowly eating my throat square,

Tightly hard, clamped shut
And Rosa heard mother's voice
"Awake, awake, awake, smoke

Awake, awake, it's silent...!"
And Rosa woke me, curiosity
Provoked, sort of...
And we knocked the stuffing
Out of the fire, in the garage,
And Mike and Zaneta's
Diabolical intentions sunk
To the bottom of that winter's morn!
As they left their foot steps
In the white soft slipper snow
Now so many years ago!