The Burning Began Before Us

What carries us but something burning
in the sinew – wires sizzling
instructions from begetters ashed
before you fell
into the house of your being

and you can claim we’re all accidents, already
happened, the sun where I crashed in
is too vicious for this skin, blistered generations
of the damned thieves who wore it
here before me and who wear it here now, and that’s

also a message - that namesake who fought the East-
end fires in the Blitz, he stayed rooted
to his grey city by hoses, he flamed on
out, defending the mess where he began
not just spreading more of it further

away, but the hole he left fired
its sick ember right down through the line
and we’ve all since been born carrying
a slow flicker waiting to set off, just
trying not to breathe on it wrong

or at all, and I burn now only to live each day
where I landed, and on the surface at least
my flaming oxygen is stolen
from no-one, but then isn’t every house, every house -
built right where something gave way