flame is an honest god

why flame is so much more of magic

in the schemes of self-made ascension,

or in the subterfuge of material conversion.

for the routines and reflexes of the flicker,

as if the dance of the singular,

as soul in physical conversion.

are only listening to the conversation 

of the burn,

that seems once-sided with agony expressed,

yet silence pronounced is in the surrender.

god would want it that way.

that is, the god of religion governing earth,

if that's a logic to be working with.

but flame, what would I ask of thee?

ever curvaceous of the face to face,

in such animation, 

from an intimate blue 

to a jocular orangish of the flicker,

as if sending off heat-wishing 

for ascendency.

yet the surface of all of this

does not reveal the inner work in progress,

the inner dialogue of material 

into the conversion of the commitment 

to the heat-yell of the burn.

all of the moisture present insists on leaving

way before any of the real miracles occur.

wood-burn is a tall thermal story 

because it has gestures 

and postures and surrenders.

wick is just a professional at a gig,

a purposeful martyr dedicated to the cause,

where all the ceremony 

around candle presentation 

is spacially polite.

I wanted wood stock,

as kindling in a room-full 

of heated conversation,

where so much magic is in a visual uproar,

where it's like a translation of thunder, 

done without suddenness or a bark to it,

as almost a confusion 

between a distant waterfall's muted sound

and the kind of flame action 

of a desperate commingling 

but not yet a bonfire freestanding. 

quite simply and symbolically, 

just a flame,

as if an innocent child's face 

asking an earnest luminous question 

that so divests the subject matter 

from its substance.

what flame-magic that disappearance offers.

I so believed in substance.

yet all of these flammables seem like friends,

conversations of substance as givens

and yet subject 

to the divine mystery of flame.

flame is so much of a mirror to me.

I can relate so much of my perception 

to a flame.

experience is all flammables in parting.

flame is an honest god,

for I only have memories 

as becoming distant embers . . .