IAN MULLINS TIME TO BURN A poem, I informed her, while she brushed her hair the way my mother used to scrape out the grate, is like the perfect head of hair. You tease it and worry it, gently caress one side or furiously attack another. You tend it long or you hack it down to size. But it’s never perfect and it’s never done. Even when you leave it alone it’s still growing; you wake up in the morning with a different ‘do than the one you went to bed with the night before. And letting it grow wild is as much a decision as hacking it off and polishing your skull like a bell. And then - “You know what’s wrong with you?” she interrupted. “You’re addicted to obscurity. You should spend some time doing things ordinary people care about.” “Such as?” I asked. She smiled like a kitten with milk on its claws. “Help me do my hair.” I sparked my fingers through its reds and pinks, remembering the ashtray smell of cold morning ashes, the rusty tang of yesterday’s Echo setting uncut black diamonds on fire. Winter hiding in the back yard while we smoked our soles like kippers. “Am I right?” she asked, “or am I wrong?” “Both,” I lied, pulling dental floss hair through broken teeth. Obscurity is not my habit, merely a by-product of frustrated passion. The same impulse that pulls your hair weaves our pigtails together between the real of the imagined then and the reality of invoking it now; an imaginary present we bring alive by loving the ashes as much as we love the fire. Watch me thrust my hands deep into those flames. These are the ashes of a lifetime. I only have time to burn. Back to TUT Samples Back to The Ugly Tree The Library