Falling

There are no songs for the burning child who falls and falls and falls. No spiel that doesn’t choke the throat or set adrift from a paper face, to spin and float in charcoal curls.

The burning child, he falls forever. He cannot be stopped or stalled, impossible to catch or save, he burns the voyeurs’ retinas to black suns. He labours in negative.

He takes and takes, and burns and burns, that child, all those he touches as he falls.

And in that time we may remain at finger stretch, or elect to turn our backs on the burning child, kneed our eye-sockets red. Whilst some

pause only to adjust the shutter speed.