“Pressure knocks at my doorA clock ticks and demands its dueThe lava burns from the floorBut not in a game like it used to.So little time to figure it all outSo many distractions to prevent successI’m in a dark forest with no path or routeBut this internal fire knows no rest.”

“I once took all my journalsfrom 3 years and burned themin a fire. Alone,watching the past disintegratereminded me of life and time. The presentis all I had. Time slowly burningaway each moment.”

“What if we fan theflames of Delightwhile we get to play in the dappled sunlight at the edge of time?”

“But clouds bellied out in the sultry heat, the sky cracked open with a crimson gash, spewed flame-and the ancient forest began to smoke. By morning there was a mass of booming, fiery tongues, a hissing, crashing, howling all around, half the sky black with smoke, and the bloodied sun just barely visible. And what can little men do with their spades, ditches, and pails? The forest is no more, it was devoured by fire: stumps and ash. Perhaps illimitable fields will be plowed here one day, perhaps some new, unheard-of wheat will ripen here and men from Arkansas with shaven faces will weigh in their palms the heavy golden grain. Or perhaps a city will grow up-alive with ringing sound and motion, all stone and crystal and iron-and winged men will come here flying over seas and mountains from all ends of the world. But never again the forest, never again the blue winter silence and the golden silence of summer. And only the tellers of tales will speak in many-colored patterned words about what had been, about wolves and bears and stately green-coated century-old grandfathers, about old Russia; they will speak about all this to us who have seen it with our own eyes ten years – a hundred years! – ago, and to those others, the winged ones, who will come in a hundred years to listen and to marvel at it all as at a fairy tale. (“In Old Russia”)”

“Busy not thyself with this world, for with fire We test the gold, and with gold We test Our servants.”

“derelict. my voice cracked and yolk poured out. wind chimes rigid, no breeze, no song. my wings found hidden in your suitcase. pleas for help mistaken for a swan song. i’m stuffing pages from my journal down my throat as kindling. hoping the smoke will get the taste of you out of my mouth. he looks at me from across the room and all i want is to push him against the wall. ravage. ravage. carnage has never been more vogue. is it still art if it doesn’t bring you to your knees? lover, let me prey at your altar. let me bare my fangs in praise. don’t i look so pretty in a funeral shroud? i keep time with the click of my creaking bones. dance with me under the milky translucence of a world suffocating. how did you find me? i buried myself beneath the cicadas. is a girl trapped in glass still a prize?let me get under your skin. i want to know what your fears taste like. i want to consume.”

“Faith is the light of fire.”

“God is a consuming fire.”

“You have to go through the fires to be tested by faith.”

“The blazing fire burns!”

“Holy One is a flame.”

“She’s fire…but she will not burn you. She knows all too well how it feels to live with ashes.”

“The fire is a flame.”

“Kindled the fire within you.”