Where

 

     There is a lamp light I watch,

the lamp is basic, cheap, unpainted and weak,

     but the flame, the flame; an expensive dance that flickers and flares.

 

     My eyes look in so deep, so deep beyond

the blackened glass house of the flames imprisonment,

     it begs to be free like me, like I often plea,

          but its height and temper, its breath of fire like that of mine -

               as the governor sits as mean as ancients sometimes seem;

                    no more than the lumens of a damp and old matchstick,

                          no more the lumens of a stale phosphor of dwindling and not tinder.

 

     My once lithe body would sway like the flame in days of slow motion songs,

my arms embracing love of the farer sex as the buxom would have cradle

my power of loins – touching my chest, my closed impassioned eyes and

yearning of song to sing the duets lovers throng to dance halls but,

     only knowing of each others isolation as hips sway like Nina Simones.

 

     My eyes are now closed again as memories of innocence and ignorance

visit old haunts and, old loins,

     I stir as fainted melodies are tried to conjure,

     but, here upon this year and this malady,

          there is no-one within these gargantuan arms of ‘understanding and finesse,’

               just a critique that, the tears are brought by a slight of paraffin and chemical nuisance -

                    that does not even know forgiveness.

 

     My length of service has meant nothing, my time too has been of……….

 

          ‘I am looking ‘now’ upon the flame and note something incoherent here,

                incoherent too within my abandoned heart and that,-

                     be this ‘quiet’ as the flame flickers solemnly and, slowly.’

 

                          It is perhaps a flame that knows something more than I,

                               more than a prowess expressing blind and that,

                                    be an identity for all my life – crying;-

                                         “how alone it is to love as, silenced, I again can never dare.”

 

 

Michael J Waite 15th of October 2022.

     ‘I still love you.’