41 Comments
User's avatar
Kerry Sutherland's avatar

hayloft home, gasping

hot oxygen-fed demise

critters run and hide

Expand full comment
Chris J. Franklin's avatar

The hay ignited,

And it burned, while we wondered,

Who would get the blame? 😎

Expand full comment
Honeygloom's avatar

Ooo nice! A little sabotage🖤

Expand full comment
Chris J. Franklin's avatar

Haha! Yes! Let your pyromania run wild, and then say it was all spontaneous combustion! 😎

Expand full comment
M. N. Tarrint's avatar

Wait! I thought of another one in the shower...

Red immolation

Cold fear to fiery dread

Burned out empty bed

Expand full comment
Honeygloom's avatar

🔥Excellent use of shower time🖤

Expand full comment
M. N. Tarrint's avatar

Smoldering secrets

Blossom into fierce bonfires

Bitter dust remains.

Expand full comment
Honeygloom's avatar

Oo so good! I love the parallel you’ve drawn🖤

Expand full comment
M. N. Tarrint's avatar

Thanks! I remember sitting in the corner in 4th grade with an old paperback of Ripley's Believe it or Not, and 2 stories stuck with me. One of them was about spontaneous combustion. I have a secret fear of it.

Expand full comment
Honeygloom's avatar

It’s a wild thing. But honestly… we all have to go sometime, it would be pretty epic…

Expand full comment
Songsterfunsterhamster's avatar

It’s farmyard semtex:

Bugs and mould and sun and boom.

Up without warning.

Expand full comment
Honeygloom's avatar

Terrifyingly accurate comparison! I love the middle line, like a fuse leading up to the boom🖤

Expand full comment
Leigh Parrish's avatar

Spontaneous, they

Called it. But we both know who

Set Grandma alight.

Expand full comment
Honeygloom's avatar

Intrigued, love the hint of a sinister story here, want to hear more🖤

Expand full comment
erniet's avatar

I've heard of hay combustion but never witnessed it first hand. I've heard it's from fermentation in the center (if the hay's not fully dry)....the alcohol produced is what ignites the hay.

Did the folks where you grow up roll up their hay or do regular bales? I wonder if it's more common in round bales or silage...🤔

Expand full comment
Honeygloom's avatar

Both round and rectangular bales, my understanding is that either can combust. Mainly because the smaller rectangular bales tend to be stacked so that negates any upside to having a smaller bale. But yeah, you don’t want to bale green or wet hay.

As for silage… idk, I feel like I hear more about the other dangers of silage IN silos, like drowning in it, the anaerobic environment, plus NO2 production. Would be interesting to do some research on fires.

But my uncle used to keep huge piles of pea silage in piles out in the open air on his farm. Smelled awful, but was never a danger as far as I remember. Of course we were warned not to play in it. I remember being a little insulted that grownups would think I’d go near anything that stunk so bad😂

Expand full comment
erniet's avatar

Fun facts…my high school mascot was the Haybalers (and yeah I didmy fair share of bucking hay on to the back of a truck); also we used to play touch football on the tops of the big stacks of hay bales; it makes for one hell of an out of bounds!😂

Expand full comment
Honeygloom's avatar

I used to buck hay with my uncle for the sole purpose of proving I *could* buck hay at 5’2” 100lbs. I may be a little stubborn😂

Expand full comment
erniet's avatar

It’s technique more than strength!😁

Expand full comment
Honeygloom's avatar

Ha! Yep, just need some momentum!

Expand full comment
erniet's avatar

Heated hay, dead grass,

Bursting into bright cinders...

If it burns, it burns.

Expand full comment
Honeygloom's avatar

My does it burn! So scary🔥

Expand full comment
erniet's avatar

Spinal Tap drummers

Bursting into piles of ash

Still makes me chuckle.

😁

Expand full comment
Honeygloom's avatar

Omg! I haven’t seen this in forever! Completely forgot about that😂

Expand full comment
A.C. Cargill, Author's avatar

Well up within me

Surge and roil and explode fire

Relief comes and gives rest

Expand full comment
Honeygloom's avatar

Love this🥹 It does feel like that sometimes🖤

Expand full comment
Richard Blaisdell's avatar

Balls of high BTUs ,Russian thistle,

Combustion engines constrained

Ukrainian matches spontaneous lit.

Expand full comment
Honeygloom's avatar

Oo yeah, that stuff is bad news! There is tumbleweed all over where I used to spend my summers.

Expand full comment
Richard Blaisdell's avatar

In spring new growth is edible. The I go. Food on the brain,

Expand full comment
Honeygloom's avatar

Oo interesting! I’ve never seen any around where I live, but I’d imagine if I drove south a bit there’d be some.

Expand full comment
Richard Blaisdell's avatar

A plant that removes salt out of overused land. But when dry and catches fire wind blows to create a torch; spear the fire. Ashes return to earth. All part of the great round.

Expand full comment
Richard Blaisdell's avatar

One of many plants mentioned in my book “0ne green thumb and nine sticky fingers “

Expand full comment
A.P. Murphy's avatar

I burn in protest

at the ordinariness -

my life that won't burn

Expand full comment
Honeygloom's avatar

A familiar feeling, that blaze is always on the horizon where the next project sits🖤

Expand full comment
David Perlmutter's avatar

Charles Dickens has the character of Krook spontaneously combust (for no obvious reason) in "Bleak House".

Expand full comment
Honeygloom's avatar

Oh this I have an answer for. Dickens, along with the rest of Victorian England, was obsessed with spontaneous combustion. Dickens based the death of Krook on the account of Countess Cornelia di Bandi, who died of supposed spontaneous combustion in 1731. Dickens studied her case thoroughly and was convinced it was genuine, despite the fact that she regularly covered herself in the highly flammable substance “spirit of camphor” when she was feeling ill. Basically slathering yourself in alcohol and then catching fire isn’t what I’d call spontaneous, but the Victorians loved a gruesome, mysterious death 🤷‍♀️

Expand full comment
David Perlmutter's avatar

Dickens was serious about getting his facts straight- probably had to do with him starting out as a journalist....

Expand full comment
Honeygloom's avatar

Tbh, I respect that.

Expand full comment
Theresa Greene's avatar

When he first kissed me

Spontaneous combustion

Fired up my cold heart ⁴❤️

Expand full comment
Chris J. Franklin's avatar

That is amazing! Very nicely done... 😎

Expand full comment
Honeygloom's avatar

Ooo 🔥 Love it!

Expand full comment