I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason I can't tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognised by burning.
Winning an official World Cup with the South African team had become my burning ambition.
God, for example, appealed to me as a beardless man wearing a quilted silk cap; holiness was something burning, forbidding, something connected with fire while a day had the form of an oblong box.
There's no replacement for having a burning desire to talk about something: 'I know this and other people need to know!'
I'm sure when they partied when Rome was burning, that was a really great party.
Many pilots of the time were the opinion that a fighter pilot in a closed cockpit was an impossible thing, because you should smell the enemy. You could smell them because of the oil they were burning.
You don't need a four-year college degree if you have burning ambition or a great plan.
When I'm off the road, my husband and I recharge our batteries. It's a day of deep rest and connection with the spiritual, and that can be anything - going for a walk in nature, being in silence, burning incense.
For people who are displaced, you can reconstruct the story of your life from the objects you have access to, but if you don't have the objects then there are holes in your life. This is why people in Bosnia - if anyone was running back into a burning house, it was to salvage photos.
What makes Burning Man special is the location: a 9-mile circle of gypsum, an ancient dried ocean bed. The ground is like a flat crust with no plants or insects, a perfect outdoor gallery for monumental interactive sculpture and architecture.
