Candleflame poems on Hello Poetry

Fatima Ammar Mar 2014

Flickering gently, sending an enigma across every face,

Breeze of jasmine scent
bathing o'er us,

Candleflame, scarlet wonder,
source of life, source of warmth,
my relief, my first class solitude.

Dark shadow creatures
of the night, dancing glorious
dances of the ol' days,
them young, joyous girls.

Drums beating in time,
with my heart,
dancers jumping, spinning in time,
all in the shadows
of a single candleflame.

On a mournful dark night,
in the ghastly moonlight...

*

---What I was thinking when writing it:
I was thinking of African dancers and shadow plays and the eiry moonlight that reminds me of a candle. A completely different world of beauty and magic.

Windsor I Guadalupe Jr Oct 2015

Levitations

we did what we could that night
and a supernal being is ashamed.

this is the drift of thought
in the vast ocean of gilded gold
frothing at the edge of rotund:
giving back a silenced enigma,
spewing the answer in an exhaust
of white rancid smoke
dharma burns plastered to cigarette.
burning and burning, afloat are the high-pouncing embers looking for fleeting shades and dagger-ambulations
of a shadow's swagger in tectonic soiree.

we did what we could that night.
like a flash of lightning at the back
of hoarded hills,
or say, something brutal and brash with
modern sensibilities we never jell —
we come not with softness or life
peering out of our eyes like little girls
serenaded by mad men in the eve of
forlorn nights. we did what we could
and some god cringes, winces away
like the erratic dance of candleflame.

the leviathan black spreads its parasol
and we are no strangers.
when our veraciousness starts to pierce
the veil, the populace should start
to worry of their trapped conditions.
we came here for something:
be it flesh, be it wisdom, be it plain inebriations — we will never flinch
at the squalor of tomorrow's sobering.
keep in mind, kaibigan.

    it's all levitation and transcendence.

the darkness wept as the car
groans near the end of its immaterial life.
i flick the last cigarette into the grey-faced pavement.
all oceans drowned,
all shadows burgeoned,
all fires emerged plump,
this silent radio rivers
through the wave of this ephemerality,
the onomatopoeia of strangeness,
the   thud
      of the senseless head of metal
     on the body

the   clackety-clack
       of hours thereafter!

ayeayeaye! the streets sing no mild
  appendage. the solstice is lost
    in the length and precision of all things.
bringing ourselves to the brink of absence,
    our pallid selves set ablaze, emblazoning
the quick life of matchflame or rumble of
    thunder — the steady phoenix of
       that night! this is learning
  to breathe again, o, what currents purloined in vicious swarth as we keep
     this river flowing into our throats,
  jamming our souls to compelling music.

   remember kaibigan,
it's all levitation and transcendence.

For Marc Ocampo.

#poem #poetry #friendship

Matt Shade Jul 2014

Shattering the Diamond City

Shooting stars fell in a line and danced across my eyes in quick succession
though the sun outshone them all
and who ever worshiped the stars anyway?

Then like fireflies flew north before broke,
and from the south I saw the great Diamond City
reach out above a jungle of metal concrete plastic plastic with lights
Oh! lights

Pinprick window TV stream style smiles selling streets projecting the moon for
advertising space; the population rises

Factory stormclouds only irritate umbrella stand footsteps who pretend
to hate the rain
and outshines dim sunlight baptizing all in electric glory

Candleflame prisons of light that honk through haze through
rainy Monday 6:30AM’s
choke on each others breath until we have nothing left but CO2;
dandelions inherit the earth.

#society #people #city

Windsor I Guadalupe Jr Jan 2016

Nudes: II

i   am   going
into    the    limp    dark
   where   silence   recites
a brief  candleflame

    it is   as if  these cavernous   impulses
rush   back    like  children
     whose  heads   are diadems
and   you,   their   mother   of   spring’s   masterful
    hands    neither  went
      nor      came

to   a   dream
    of
        roses  which
trudging    kisses   smite  the loam,
    giving  them   reckless meanings
yet    all    the   same

   in    death
and   in    beginning,  in  these large minutes
your   eyes  contain
such    light   which   all  things  darkled
    are    born anew
with   timid
       names

#poem #poetry #******

Jair Graham Mar 2017

Fragility

I, your oak tree ask, will you rest your painted wings on my branch?
I know I can't make your fleeting candleflame of a life last more than your few bright days, but for now rest upon my ancient bark and hear the lullaby of my leaves.
If rain should cause you to falter I'll bend my branches to shield you from the icy volley of raindrops.
As stars fade out in ink of night, I'll let a leaf fall from my bough and I hope it brings some comfort, in your last glimpses of this cruelly beautiful world.

#love #life #death #butterfly #kindness #bittersweet #vulnerability #empathy #fragility #oaktree

Windsor I Guadalupe Jr Dec 2015

Declension Of Angels

swift inset of love's Sanskrit,
a thorn of contestations.

make cadence this sensorial music.
centrifugally waiting bodies
to cross Earths.

a plethora of annulments.
lion-telling Sun singes through intersections of infinities:

we cannot wait to quash
the morning, the scent of guava leaves
and the cerement of flour on chicken.
earth-hewn mounds of meat pressed
against beholden kitchen clangor.

declension of memory past wood
and pillars of home. lattices of light
forerunning fingers, let down the curtain.
wind swings with maddened turbine,
afternoons high with deadlock.

of all that is not here, the force
reawakens a long-stumped ******,
beating us back to edges ruthless
with angels entirely curved, singled-out,
wings clipped, dancing at the tip
of the candleflame.

For Grandma Doring.

#poem #poetry #death

Mikaila Dec 2015

And Then You Came

Look at me.
Look at how I used to wander the night
A craving so excruciating, so white hot, so secret
Blooming in my heart
Feeling my love like a disease-
A disease of the blood
Pumping molten silver through my veins and forcing me to struggle inside my skin
Walking, walking, always searching in the night
For something to cool me.
Look at how I used to think
That
Was joy.
It was a tainted joy. It was a stolen joy.
I loved
All alone I loved these people
And I burned with it,
I left scorch marks on the ground where I stepped,
I left embers burning and smoldering wherever I lay my hands, those nights.
I could feel the heat
Unbearable
Inside of me, like holding your hand over a candleflame.
It seared me. It ruined me, in many ways.
I worshiped the ashes of my clawing passion,
Subdued and restrained, imprisoned and
Hushed
For so long that it starved and rattled the bars of my ribcage in ire.
Look at me, how I was
How wrong
I was
That love could only be that.
Out of fear, I believed that love
Always meant shame.
Always meant secrets.
Always meant
Holding my burning heart in my hands and feeling the pain of it
Protecting somebody from my punishing passion.

But then you came.

You
With your soft eyes, green and shining and full of love.
You with your skin like silk
With words of love for me that brought no fear,
With hands that melted me from the inside out
And arms that held me together when I cried
Because I was ashamed of how I loved you.
You looked me in the eyes.
You looked that in the eyes
And you loved me for it.
You loved me for the love I have been hated for
All my life
And I could fall at your feet.
I could,
But for the first time,
I would rather lie in your arms.
I want your breath, your tenderness.
I want your solidity, the weight of you, the comforting way we fit together.
You are no god, to me. You are more. You are so much more.
No pedestals for you, no altars. I cannot bear to be so far from you as to worship.
I need you up against my heart, I need you in my arms.
You can't be an angel- I couldn't let you rise,
I would beg you to stay here on earth with me
And kiss me one more time and tell heaven
You'd be there tomorrow.
I don't want to start wars in your name,
I want to spend the rest of time
Murmuring it in my sleep as I roll over to kiss your shoulder
In the middle of the night
While the moonlight slants through the curtains to make your hair into a halo.
I want a life with you, not a death for you,
I don't want to suffer for you, I want to laugh with you.

I used to think love could only be pain.
And then you came.
And I have never been so happy to be wrong.
I have spent my life writing poems
That exult love, that sing praise, that idolize.
I've felt every one of them. Felt that love that seemed so full, so complete
Tried to explain it with words stacked on words
When what I was really trying to do
Was give it without giving it.
Give it without someone to take it from me.
I wrote to confess, to release.

And then you came.
And now I write for a new reason-

My love,
You are not the sun. You are not the moon.
You need no comparisons, no sweeping metaphors.
You are simply and perfectly
The person I want to wake up next to
Until the end of time
And that
Is everything I have ever craved.

Mikaila Aug 2014

Glass Houses

You have left no footprints here.

Many shoes have scuffed these gleaming hallways dull,
Gauche and mudcaked, large and echoing and
Careless.
Many hands have scrawled initials on these walls, invasive.
Gouged ownership into wooden panels with small, coarse blades
Pulled from pockets.

It is true that dust has lain in drifts
In silence
On every surface of my heart
For so long that the wings of a trapped moth could create
Snow angels and murmuring hieroglyphs along the window ledge,
The lightest sigh kick up a sandstorm on any landing,
The flickering of a single candleflame expel eddies of powdery currents to settle in concentric ripples, like the whispering chiffon skirts of a ballerina crumpling to curtsy.

It is true, as well, that every morning I fling wide the doors
And let the light in,
But light has no fingers, no arms or heartbeat,
No
Breath,
And when it fades
Leaves not a trace.

Evidence of past trespassers lies strewn,
Enshrined in a large, beautiful mausoleum with sparkling windows and
Total silence.
I took your hand and led you down each hallway,
Showed you the aging murals and
The haunted rooms--
Places where shutters slam of their own accord
And faces besides one's own inhabit mirrors--
Waltzed with you in the grand, shrouded foyer,
Sang to you sitting on the eaves in the starlight
But never once
Did I leave you to your own devices.

Not an heirloom did I let you leave your fingerprints upon,
And wherever I led you
Not a breath stirred--
The solid, blue stillness remained,
A former time trapped in glass
Catching and releasing tricks of light to mimic movement,
And only I spoke, only I sang, only I
Waltzed.
Only my footfalls echoed
And only my shadow soared,
For as long as I touched you
You could never touch
Me;
Paper thin, a refraction from the other side
A ring of crystal whose echo would ****** into
That inevitable quiet, so rich and heavy
Like the dust adorned velvet drapes I draw
Each night and peel back at daybreak.

Like a forest preserved,
Only light enters here
And only images leave.
The beaten paths have been
Abused
But only those who made them may change any:
The rest are only visitors, who take nothing but breaths
And leave nothing but silence,
Who **** nothing but time
Although they may hurl stones
And stir up no dust whatsoever,
Regardless of their flailing passions.

Many loves have scarred this heart,
Burnt names in lists
Into the railings and stair treads so that I may touch nothing without feeling the remembered heat.
Many souls have lit this hall with sacred gold
And bounced their laughter off the beams.

But your name
When spoken
Fell like a shadow on the floor,
Grasping feebly at a few dreamy dust motes illuminated by an errant shaft of sunlight
Before fluttering into silence.
Many names make this heart
A temple and a
Tomb
But yours
Is not among their number--

Another day is ended,
Another sun is set,
And you
Have left no footprints here.

#love #metaphor #truth #heart #passion #goodbye #breakup #acceptance #confidence

Windsor I Guadalupe Jr Mar 2016

Say, When Things Start To Look For Their Owners

in some paradoxes, space happens when two people
               are close but not close enough.

after hours of demand, the presence occurs in many ways.
ubiquitous objects rend the veil of vicariousness.
             there will be a repetition of days in here,
an assertive swing of dialogues to make ends appear as though
    real and accurate.

in a brief candleflame of silence on a Vietnamese restaurant’s rooftop,
    there will be noxious space conscious of: we are waning.
the way words leap from fences of teeth and venetian hairs.
        air becomes a fat mound of fools in arcades and then in an instant,
  it feels as if there is no more space left to move in, so they wear
     each other’s skin and shed right after the ballast’s fall.

   when done explaining a dream, sleep goes to belabor a bell.
soundless beside them, stiff as a body dreaming for itself.
   in some paradoxes, what is imagined is most real.
  there is suspicion that this lacks sentimentality. it is as carnal
and as commonplace as a hint of touch from a closed-in expanse.

  that time at the market when you had your hands fretting
for shapes of perfect fruits, taking them in your careful hands
wary enough to not beat them senselessly to the pulp of their
   glazed figures – the prices start to inflate and you wonder why
  people still remained when at the first sign of difficulty
       you   start   your   furlough.

     and also sauntering with maimed pace, that of autumn’s slow
reprieve, making your way past decrepit buildings,
   you stop to take sunsets not because they’re marvelous,
   but because you easily forget – and accept that there are
   also    things  wet under   the rain  and not with tears.

when in another paradox, things point to their source
when doused with oblivion – starting to breathe on its own,
occupying space
          leafing through days when   something instantly said
    rushes back   searching   for   its  holder,
              to  be   given,   stolen,   or say,
                                     left   to  die   on its   own –

#poem #poetry

Mikaila Mar 2014

Untitled

You have a kind face.
People with kind faces always draw me in, like a candleflame draws a moth.
I have seen enough of beauty to know
That people with kind faces can immolate you
With the terrible force of their loveliness.
But... they are so very warm.

You do have
Such a kind face.

Jamison Bell Mar 2019

a dingo took my baby

I never have to check my phone and so I watch the candleflame dance
Fingertips grow numb to the soulless rocks glass
My cigarette whispers secrets to a callous night
And I think my cat died
I’d check but I can’t take another hit tonight
Unless it’s off a pipe
She’ll still be dead in the morning
Silence hangs about like an ugly hotel painting that’s been inexplicably bolted to the wall
If I were to put a **** out on my chest to punish every thought I had of you
I’d spell out your name
A thousand times

nivek Aug 2024

weaving love

within the warp and weft
the fingers of a God
-weaving love

the ancient songs of Sparrows
handed down generations
-cheering hearts

somewhere someone whistles a tune
happy in their work
-poetry without words

Sunup and across the skies
a trail daily blazing
-a tiny flickering candleflame.

— The End —