The Burning is the Thing

Everything disappears, you have to be quick,
they won’t let you keep anything.

They’ll kill you before they’ll give you
a moment to remember who you are.

They’ll find strange new ways to break your heart

and the day will come when you discover
whose side the years are really on.

It’s too late to be skinny or beautiful
but we can dance like the girl
at the bus station at 3 a.m.,

we can write poems like we’re drunk in someone’s
kitchen breaking the furniture.

Pretty words won’t save us and there’s nothing
that ever comes of anything, but don’t despair.

There is fire in music
and music in fire

and the burning is the thing.

William Taylor Jr. lives and writes in San Francisco. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, and a volume of fiction. His work has been published widely in literary journals, including Rattle, The New York Quarterly, and The Chiron Review. He was a recipient of the 2013 Kathy Acker Award, and edited Cocky Moon: Selected Poems of Jack Micheline (Zeitgeist Press, 2014). His latest poetry collection, The People Are Like Wolves to Me, is available from Roadside Press.