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

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These fitful wicks have been replaced by manlight.

Candlewicks
in the sky

thunder
and clap unite to night

giving me a
standing ovation

may
i ask for more