Hard to imagine life by candlelight.

Dinner and reading, days of rain.
Fire and its heat. I am used to candles with scents:
grapefruit and fir; eucalyptus mint; tobacco leaf;
sea salt and chamomile; red hibiscus flower.
Hold your hand inches above the flame, feel its itch.

The wick of a wax bedside candle can burn
unevenly and flake at its edges. The wax will
pool at the base of the wick, a reservoir of scents.

For millennia this wick was rapture, a flame
lighting moonless nights and lightly warming
little spaces. We made fire stay put, gave it a
finite life and watched it burn away from top
to bottom until it was dark once more.

Now we light the world with gaudy neon,
pulsing blisters and hulking electric strobes
that do not change. Cold fire in a glass bottle.

These fitful wicks have been replaced by manlight.

Our bed is the prayer rug where I found God.

Yeah, THE God –

Not circumnavigating morality
Or bones of old saints
Lonely illusions of the sad and middle-aged
All Fat Tuesday freakshows in comparison

Our bed is the altar of sacred rites –

Marked with the devil’s ******* Sharpie
And the intricately crocheted lace of sin
Nightly baptized in warm, honey-coated nothing
Pink patterns of iron and salt on linen

Painted idols on the shrine –

Absolution pours through drafty windows
Older than our bodies
Glass frosted by years without suds
Only rain

A holy city of yours and mine –

With gentle pyro ways
Stone and mortar become flame
The balustrades collapse
You light candlewicks with your fingertips

people need reminders,
like my absenteeism using a mobile
phone: i just think of able people
donning crutches with those devices...
me? i'm mobile... they? they're static
parishioners: everyone seems to
be donning a crucifix or an aged
bald and fat Buddha idol of the living room:
one stone,
two pigeons.
                       people do need reminders
though... oh sure, i'll get far,
i'll wake the masses alright,
i'll be up bright and early and worthy
of a radio broadcast... it will happen:
i'm just not that ready to feed people with:
what ******* ***** came next,
and how i celebrated after...
or didn't.                 grow intelligent enough
to people hate you, literally: it's bile
comment after bile comment after more bile...
i never got that... i worked my ***-off
for the grades, but there's a lunchbox feed
of people saying: and i wish
i never worked that academically hard
either... sure thing: there, ain't, any, awards...
you get rewards from ******* other people
over... and that's how you make it...
no other way... and forget about staging a truce.
there's the Blockbusters': Egyptians love
Norse Myth... and there's the Syrian Candlewicks -
both are Bach worthy ***** compositions needing
production twinklings... boom char boom...
                and again: Sinjit's your uncle.
class.
                   slang years behind? the aversion
in using the word cool...
                              class... meaning stylish...
meaning anything more than that bodybuilding ****
friend of yours said about flexing the blunt (bicep):
                              or as the ***** granny Grey
lisped:         pucker up you godforsaken heathens!
                   salto the word Haydn!
  minus the trolley and extra cabbage packed
adding up the arithmetic: mind the ******* goldfish!
                           no one tries to be funny...
it never works when trying...
                                        i'm not funny...
i wasn't born to be... funny... but it's funny when
   a granny on a scooter replaces an earl in a cocktail
shawl... pretty: but it's merely a Kashmiri jumper
you shlag... turban suits you, sir...
                           and you too, sir...
              i say, smocking and barricades...
i say, kind sir: earthenware and silk for what
i intended to say in the first place: a silken bathrobe
to leisure in: entertaining at tea... time...
           oh indeed sir... 5 p.m. at the latest.
god i'd love to live on the Faroe Isles
               and butcher Orca swarms typified by
akin relation to Mongols.      
                                dreary cultural envisioning
readied to upkeep a status quo...
                                               mind, the, guillotine:
more than a toe might come off your
  "precious" body, as precious as receiving a
birthday card.

Candlewicks
in the sky

thunder
and clap unite to night

giving me a
standing ovation

may
i ask for more