"tealight" poems
If you’re ever sat alone in the darkest room of your mind remember that there’s a tealight on the windowsill.
Light that candle.
And that little flame of mine will glow so fiercely, emitting undeniable warmth and love,
that will dance around the room like a firefly.
Jul 30, 2018
Jul 30, 2018 at 6:45 PM UTC
A Zippo lighter with a smoker's cough,
propositions the ladybug
clinging to a flannel pocket,
You can always trust a tealight
to warm the neglected beetles,
that cling to your chest.
this Ritual of the staring contest.
attention behind the curtain:
When You blink at the Rorschach shadows
tell me, they are not mailboxes.
The spirits linger; we stumble into entanglement
birch trees weaving
baskets from our branches
I'm known to cave on integrity, for the taste of freckles,
flickering tealights in the hearthstone, with a smokers cough.
Sep 9, 2018
Sep 9, 2018 at 3:08 AM UTC
Oh, I should have been fog and not a person.
Fog or sunlight,
Something untouchable
And unintrusive.
Something easily waved away or shaded from.
It is so tiresome
To be a person,
To crave the way souls do.
I am sorry, love,
That I am so coarse and revealed,
That I cannot fade into the background
So quickly
So seamlessly
As I usually can.
I promise I usually can- I have made a life of it.
This is bad form, on my part,
A slip, a trip-and-fall, a faux pas.
I have been undone
And it seems I'm caught unaware and unprepared,
Scrambling, trying to tug my skin over the parts of my soul
Where it has unraveled and failed me
Its usual disguise.
Where, I wonder, does my mind's gory skin-and-bones sense of touch come from?
Maybe my body
Is where the feelings live and char everything.
Maybe if I could lose the canvas and frame,
The paintings in blood scrawled by all my stumbles into love,
Maybe this gauche, needy thing I call a soul
Would get gone too,
And I could comfortably be something....
Untouchable- Fog, or sunlight.
Something less lonely and less weak.
But I have this pounding pulse
And this fluttering stomach
And this aching heart
And these bones full of hollow light,
And they control me,
And my skin is a fragile lantern that makes a blazing holocaust look like a tealight candle
From outside.
It is flimsy as wet paper, stretched tight
Over the searing claws and fangs of a soul
So
Hungry for this world,
For the things I love
That in fear and resignation my heart
Scores little hashmarks into the cage of my ribs
Counting each tremulous day
One more
That hasn't ripped me to shreds just yet.
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 10:44 AM UTC
The outside is off limits and a doorstep becomes a dais,
To show frustration and sympathy,
To light a candle, to mourn
To stand with others when we cannot touch them.
The world is in chaos and the doorstep is a sanctuary,
To appreciate and commemorate,
To clap and laud,
Yet people are not paid in applause.
The doorstep is a safe space, but it is not a powerful one.
Isolated, a single tealight in the night,
No change is affected through a clap in the dark.
The doorstep is where the buck stops.
Another candle makes our streets no safer,
As women and flowers are trampled,
Pinned to the ground by the colleagues of a murderer.
A banging pan pays no person’s food bill,
As you judge your neighbours for their lack of civic pride,
Smug that you do your bit,
While you vote for those who have forced nurses to foodbanks.
A doorstep is as far as you go to remember loved ones,
Whose funerals you could not attend,
Whose deathbed you were absent from.
A doorstep where you miss them and ponder
Who is responsible for their death.
Is your doorstep where the buck stops?
Mar 24, 2021
Mar 24, 2021 at 6:43 AM UTC
Loneliness is an epidemic.
To have all your breaths cut short
by the ghost of a boy fizzled out.
Just a burned down wick,
the aluminium shell of a tealight.
I didn't even burn at both ends.
By the mist of an old bee sting.
Was pain any better than this?
I remember deciding to stop feeling
but not why I did.
Loneliness is a piercing migraine.
I am a bottle washed smooth by the sea.
My skin is a reused Manila envelope.
Well used and travelled,
every scar is an ink blot, how did
you know where I was going? You didn't.
Loneliness is an epidemic and yet
you scream in my loneliest moments.
Oct 8, 2014
Oct 8, 2014 at 1:47 PM UTC
cracked tealight
candle fissures,
molten chasms in a
waxy cradle.
dip your fingers,
capped, hard,
cooled pumice-wax.
peel your new
finger-mould,
digit capsule.
Aug 16, 2013
Aug 16, 2013 at 10:38 PM UTC
Today, we have surgery
I sink my chest into yours.
Your blood pumping through my veins for a bit,
I feel heavy.
I want to turn to a whisp.
Like the Night Elves in World of Warcraft.
A floating blue orb of energy
weightless electricity,
Spirit in the power lines, like that spark we felt.
Tealight in a gas stove, left on for 6 months
When I am cremated
My ashes will be Kept in little ziplock baggies,
Filed away in the back seat of my mothers car,
Until she parks in a bad part of town
You break in
Leave the quarters for the tolls
Leave the GPS cupped to the windshield.
Then snort me, in my mothers backseat.
Thinking you just hit the jack ***
That's where I will be.
Charcoal cave painting your nasal cavity
coating the inside of your lungs like a cigarette.
Replacing your addiction.
This surgery
The Aorta of copper perfume,
Scalpels summoning blood,
I, scavenged from the wreckage
my heart inside you,
the rest scrapped in a kiln.
If they botch the surgery
cold Iron will be the last thing you smell.
I, a spark
grounding from your chest.
Heart still beating.
Jan 17, 2018
Jan 17, 2018 at 9:21 AM UTC
3-6-13
Here, alone
Outside, danger lurking
Inside, safe but uncomfortable
There, not understood
And alone.
Tension on both ends
Pressure the outcome of both decisions
Like a seesaw
Never steady
Only shaking
Like a tealight
Flickering amongst the darkness
One more huff
and I'm nonexistent
Blending into the darkness
Apr 12, 2013
Apr 12, 2013 at 3:56 PM UTC
tattered flags, wedding dress trains
white fringe, cached in dirt road
like baggy jeans, converse worn like religion.
Stockholm syndrome, always ran away
never left home, delicately telling
time wearing, down eight years
down in the basement, duct-tape cuffed
to a chair, bandage torn off slow
like a drag, on a thick cigarillo
from fat lips, fat teeth
fat, you know the drill
ear didn't clover though, despite her Irish eyes
she isn't lucky, enough
to have scars, that we can see
green with liberty
she is tall, held fire until it shattered
in '17, now she has flash backs
when men in black, held a pen
to her nose and clicked, now
she's just a rumor,
"I hear she used to represent freedom"
"I never knew her"
I believe,
if the statue of liberty had a voice;
and she does...
I believe,
if the statue of liberty had red heels;
she could run...
I believe,
if the statue of liberty was a mother;
and she was,
she would have died,
a loud, running, mother,
too young.
Sep 27, 2018
Sep 27, 2018 at 7:51 PM UTC
and so yes i did go back to where
we'd once balanced
on stools
from the chill night into the buzz
where memory
waitfully pooled
but no right here was
"Brendan"
pouring the gin oh so slick
sizing me up across the bar
said that he'd make me something quick
(and slipped some ginger
in the glass)
asked me to taste for
"a surprise"
but all that the bottom
of the glass cupped
was the reflection of your ice
in the bottom of my glass, still there
that reflection, oh yes
your ice.
oh no i didn't want to talk
i clearly wasn't there
for him
said he'd just read something Chris Kraus
said he'd just watched something Goldin
then he leaned over
took my glass, and lit
the tealight
swift and sly
but all i saw deep in the flame
was the reflection of your ice
so when he turned his back i fled
out of the dream into my night.
Aug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 at 8:37 AM UTC
outside the snow lurks
a cold dew kissing warm birk
and inside our house
the tealight candles will melt
a flame will flutter
against a fogged window pane.
oh how my breath stills
captured there in bright beauty
Dec 27, 2018
Dec 27, 2018 at 1:54 AM UTC
Slam my hip down
Hipbone a Warm teardrop
Ripples on impact
My body
Of water
The stage
Walls turn wonderland
As the pills kick drum
I am the bass drop
Hands dove letter
To my mouth
The room waves
As she stands staring
Knees locked in contrapassto
Pinstripes in my eyes
I have no need for the white eyes
Or white fabric
Purity was always
your delusion
Dreamt into syringes
Pricked into tiny faves
Fat with cake and promises from their daddy's
Or any man
With a poloroid camera
I am standing on the ceiling
Chandler trees raze
And solidify a shining icy stasis
Large and formal
Cold and towering
Tables glued upside down overhead
tiny tealights stuck too
Fire flickers down
You are a spotlight
Head
Chest
Skin
All Lighthouse
Peninsula
Ocean
Curvature of the earth
You beam clairvoyance
Shake your head.
Free of these lighthouses
You are under tealight s
A woman dances
Your hand touches your tie
Pen
Wrist muscles with fingers stimming
Champagne watch
Navy sleeve
Shoulder
Cheekbone
Soft hand on your cheek.
Sep 10, 2017
Sep 10, 2017 at 7:25 PM UTC
A Zippo lighter with a smoker's cough
propositions the ladybug
clinging to a flannel pocket.
You can always trust a Tealight
to warm the neglected beetles
that cling to your chest.
This ritual of the staring contest
Eyes that shift the room temperature
behind your curtain.
With attention,
uncomfortable attention
when you blink at the Rorschach shadows.
Tell me, they are not mailboxes.
The spirits linger; we stumble into entanglement
birch trees weaving
baskets from our branches,
attempting to disprove the illusion
that ghosts aren't real
you aren't real
If you, ghosts, or ladybugs are real
I'll stare 'till death do us part
I must, stare...
I must witness all I love
to it's end.
To lose a staring contest to a ghost is to
never prove that ghost is an illusion.
Blinking, disturbs reality.
I don't need any
more obsessions that appear red
with black spots.
I used to stare at the sun.
It's bad luck
to **** lady bugs....
How lucky am I
to witness death?
Is attention a weapon?
Is attention a weapon?
I would **** more...
Sep 9, 2018
Sep 9, 2018 at 2:22 PM UTC
When I'm set aflame
I'll burn through the night
and I’m afraid
the fire burns
so hot and so bright
Nov 29, 2015
Nov 29, 2015 at 2:27 PM UTC
I pop open the blister pack and poke the pill through,
dip it in sugar to mimic an advent calendar.
The doors are endless, a childhood dream.
I can’t get used to the lightness of despair.
I’ve mastered depression- damp, bell-heavy,
but despair?
It’s almost ethereal. Fairy lights in the breeze,
a brief twinkle
the wink of a tealight before it concludes.
The children hand me treasures they’ve found in the mud
Forest School, or playing outside as it used to be called,
before everything needed branding.
I smile, another leaf for my hair
more stones for my pocket. Anchors in open water.
‘Are you okay, Miss?’
I sink into mauve bubbles, not trying to drown
only grounding my weight again.
Lilac shimmers the water and I trickle it over me,
smearing life across sallow skin.
My Rudolph earrings hang florid
tinsel etches my scalp. It’s the Nativity today
and my beaming face will echo that of the angels.
Happy.
Dec 16, 2020
Dec 16, 2020 at 8:11 AM UTC
i read 'small talk'
out loud
at the ripon cathedral,
opening the fourth
annual poetry festival.
i always wanted to light
a candle for him.
but maybe
what i did tonight
will count for more
than a tealight
priced at a pound.
i read about him
and the way
i hold his memory
in this monastery
from the seventh century
and my voice
climbed the arches
dressed in stone.
i doubt
he could hear me
but i hope he knows
i’ll guard him
like a fragile note
cradled in velvet,
no matter how far he is
from home.
Oct 2, 2025
Oct 2, 2025 at 3:27 PM UTC