Pyroclastic Love

Plus a piping hot poem from River's Writings

Image by Argie Padilla Yañez.

Are you the phoenix or simply arisen?
Justice meets salvation in (((cloven)))
Embers of misdeeds, mistruths, miss
Me maven (mock me more) mysticism
Numinous occultism sates my breath
Jaundice justice, jaeger jactation, joy
Is irrevocably veiled as your tokenism
VaNiShEs from view smoldering hues
R
I
S
I
N
G
So, I crumble like singed white wood
A mellifluous mound of ¿veneration¿
Vagrant and invoking my manifested
Mortal mortar
Eyeing my own death, <thrice> 3/3/3
Thousand torrid CUTS in heterodoxy
Sequences, flashing, beneath flames
Volcanic yin and yang likenesses (!!)
Of our heated, pyrolyzed, polarized
S
C
O
R
C
H
E
D
Calcine relationship born from pure
Pathos, rebirthed as asinine infernos
Ablaze, like us, bedizened by bye-byes
Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew
Ice. Cold.
Ultima winds in panicked puffs, nay
Until our last frozen kiss of furnaced
| Rictus | Revenge | Regret | Ribaldry |
So, in serried sorry so-so OH NO nous
Burn
​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ For
​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Me.

Pyroclastic love
Guarded passionate insight
Heathen heat vengeance​

© Edward Swafford 2025

Thank you for reading/listening! I’m a little hot under the collar.

A dear friend, River’s Writings, is slowly wading into the Substack waters, thus this post is a double offering of me and River.

I hope you love her writing as much as I do! Her piece follows below…

Image by Alexander Krivitskiy.

Without A Voice - River’s Writings

The words linger on the tip of my tongue,
As my heart thunders, it all crumbles

The words burn — an inferno of destruction,
Crawling, itching to slip through the gaps,
But I tighten my jaw, press my lips tight,
Sealing them with stitches of fear,
Swallowing down the anger like a bitter pill,
Drowning in the toxicity wafting through the air,
I choke on all that I’m leaving unsaid

My crawls are sharp,
ready to strike,
My mind is a mess,
ready to unleash hell,
My eyes are reflecting crimson,
seeking retribution

I lock the words deep within,
Throw away the key,
Stomp over the screams within,
Tarnish the promise I made to be real,
I twist the knife in my gut,
Watch my insides churn

Self-proclaimed prophesies of doom
Begin with my silence and end with us

It’s the agony I chose,
The destiny I marked,It’s the destruction I create
…
without a voice and without words

Image by Alexander Krivitskiy.

© River’s Writings 2025

Sometimes, staying silent when we want to speak is one of the greatest acts of self-destruction we can inflict on ourselves.

Thank you for reading and being here! And thanks to Edward for creating this safe space, where I can give voice to my poetry.