Candle making on an autumn night

Melt the wax without hurting those slim fingers
ones the sorceress told you belonged to an artist
in a cold city that never belonged to you
where you searched for reason to keep walking without looking back
assure that the perfume is added gradually to avoid burning
your face, the smell is always potent to fill you
with nostalgia to the one who let you stand
and knew how to bend you, left and right
to his will, to his touch-
add a wick, there should be a source of light
something to keep the fire going, shouldn't there be?
desire, despair and other dead things
you burn to light the leftover darkness in the corner of your room
this autumn takes you by storm
by way of the sun disappearing behind the mountains
the natural turn of the leaves, the wind and the day.

Go, be

I said go, but you didn't move
I said go, without budging
go, I will order you
be better than me,
I have a gift and I am wasting it
waiting for other gifts that will never arrive.

First Aid to a poet

Cover the bones fractured
with power of holding meaning, twice

bandage without stitching
a simile and a metaphor constraining

restrain from rushing towards the broken
the fallen, it is a trap for most novices

you are not meant to save the world
it will still keep going around without asking

without waiting for you to take
five minutes to arrive to disaster

don't pull out anything from your wound
it might be infected, oozes out, little held-on- secrets

a promise or two that hide
in the crevices of the markings under your skin

watch out for water when there is electricity
these are little things that can stop the heart from beating

not just music, lyrics, a dance
or someone holding your hand

be careful of irregular rhythms
a rise and fall around your heart

it is always the reason why you are standing up
just be careful and attentive, listen out and call for help when you need it.

the grace, like a cyclone

Folding over yourself
like a napkin on a Christmas table

the knowledge that if you fall
something cushions your skid

enter then, into the grace
that keeps bubbling under the surface

of the noise awakening with daybreak
the urgency of your eyes to feed on water

wash out the numb repetition
of yesterday, the day before it, the day after

don't think of funerals
when you bury time away

waste to make of old sweaters
something beautiful

re-purpose the words you say carefully
fall back into the creation of living

veer towards the grace received
all in one breath, like a cyclone turning around its own self

Old friend

Old friend,
I miss
writing to you in cursive

these hands

These hands cannot
carry across your way anything
when they are holding a baby

Blackout

You do not feel it
how winter arrives until you lose
your sense of space and place
the blackouts are often a sign that you are living

by choice or by practice
in the land of your forefathers
where they carried touches
learnt how to burn and be burnt

this is the brutal effect of winter
some don't find cover
when what you need is just at the fingertips
of your very hand

it is hard to build up to warmth
when there's much on the line
repeating, like freezing pipe
a need for warmth

you will be upset for the black out
when darkness swallows you
but then again, it is never new
how you can let go and stop resisting sleep.