ivy@ihuxt.UUCP (08/22/84)
Tan-grey billows,
smokey clouds,
heavily lifting from the ground.
Throwing themselves from
blackened windows
suicidal, plummetting into the air,
dissolving.
Pursued by fellow, manic
heavy tan-grey billows,
filling the air with
their odor, and with
their cackling cracking laughter.
Wild, indecent party-making;
red, immoral lights ablaze,
wicked billows leaping from the windows,
falling down into the sun,
committing suicide.
Glutton flames, drunken with oil,
gorging on timbers,
spitting out the boney bricks,
putting on their tan-grey coats,
and leaping from the windows,
into the frozen winter sky.
Fire-fighter,
stilt-footed, long ladder legs,
looks down god-like on mortal troubles.
Fire-fighter,
brilliant sun-yellow,
turns frosted face,
ice-glazed helmet,
toward the roaring oven-orgy;
Fire before, ice behind,
stands between,
and judges.
Fire-fighter,
brandishes the Weapon,
hurls the ThunderBolt,
white-lightning sudden,
sparkling silver spear shaft,
thrust unresistable through the startled tan-grey billows,
hurled unerring into the deamon-heart.
Hiss of dens of snakes disturbed,
hiss and spit of rabid serpents,
all possessed;
Curse the end of revelry,
Lament the loss of unrestraint,
Resist the flavor of fresh-flowing water,
Yield,
to water, winning.
Quiet now the new ice-palace,
strange-built walls of clear white hue,
stalagmite towers, spinnerettes;
from its battlements, a bright-white banner,
a clean white plume,
Crowned red to blue.
David JJ Iverson
January 2, 1984