It smolders in their eyes more so than the black
of pupil and space and heart.
The hearth of the heart has become sick,
produced weeping ashes and bipolar flares,
a crest to the sociopathic tongue that will
misunderstand and judge its own history.
It wriggles something sacred, a docile light
above its flesh, as the dimness begins to rush.
They see orange as the heat flows up their necks
beneath their heated collar and defeated heart.
They scorch the earth with dragon’s tongue,
curse their brothers and their sisters, cast
their family into the pyre with much at stake.
They smile through their frowns, they justify
their emotion as validated by the
Institutionalized academia that wrought
these controlled demolitions, that bred
desperate foot soldiers clinging to their
hollow virtues and crumbling moral high ground,
and I watch it burn to the ground,
as rebirth, a reset, is cast
and the light of the universe
ignites our hearts.

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“Orange” is a poem written by Michael Aaron Casares. All rights reserved.